





V 











V > 






/ 



s v. 



V 



^ 



^ 






"•-.. . -■"> 



^ -^ 



* ^ A 






Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2010 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 






*° 



k * A 



\ . 



^ ^ 



.^ 



http://www.archive.org/details/earlyromeOOihne 









^ - 








\*V* ', - 






















W 






' /^ 



x ^. 



> 



</- 







*>- 












^ ^ 










^,. .V 















>r 









iIpochs of Ancient History 



EDITED B v 



REV. G. W. COX, M.A. and CHARLES oANKEY, M.A. 



EARLY ROME 
W. IHNE 



* * 



EARLY ROME 



FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY TO 
ITS DESTRUCTION BY THE GA1 



- 



BY 



W. IHNE, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG 
AUTHOR OF "THE HISTORY OF ROME" 



WITH A MAP 



NEW YORK: 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 

1886. 



MAY 2 7 1904 






l rcolSOS 



Who list the Roman greatness forth to figure, 
Him needeth not to seek for usage right 
Of line, or lead, or rule, or square to measure 
Her length, her breadth, her deepness and her hight ; 
But him behoves to view in compass round 
All that the Ocean grasps in his long arms, . »* 

Be it where th' yearly star doth scorch the ground, 
Or where cold Boreas blows his bitter storms. 
Rome was th' whole world and all the world was Rome ; 
And if things named their names do equalize, 
When land and sea you name, then name ye Rome, 
And naming Rome ye land and sea comprize ! 
For th' ancient plot of Rome displayed plain 
The map of all the wide world doth contain. 

All that which Egypt whilom did devise, 
All that which Greece their temples to embrave 
After th' Ionick, Attick, Dorick guise, 
Or Corinth, skilled in curious work to grave ; 
All that Lysippus" practick art could form, 
Apelles' wit, or Phidias his skill, 
Was wont this ancient city to adorn, 
And heaven itself with her wide wonders fill : 
AU that which Athens ever brought forth wise 
Or that which Africk ever brought forth strange, 
All that which Asia ever had of prise, 
Was here to see. O marvellous great change ! 
Rome living was the world's sole ornament, 
And dead, is now the world's sole moniment ! 

Spenser, Ruins of Rente. 



PREFACE. 



Historical criticism has now for more than half a 
century been actively at work upon the history of 
Rome, and the tests which, in accordance with the 
laws of evidence, it has applied to the traditional 
narrative, have shown that the greater part of the 
tales which have passed for more than two thousand 
years as the history of the Roman kings and of the 
earlier ages of the republic, contain but a small por- 
tion of truth hidden under a huge mass of fiction. 
The results of scientific investigation have gradually 
been accepted by all scholars whose judgment is not 
perverted by an obstinate historical conservatism 
very much akin to superstition ; and the present 
volume is an attempt to give these results in a form 
intelligible to any reader of common capacity, and 
possessed of so much previous knowledge as can be 
acquired, or ought to be acquired, at an average 
school before the age of fifteen or sixteen. All 

7 



viii Preface. 

purely scientific matter has been excluded. The re- 
sults have been given with only so much of argument 
and proof as is absolutely necessary to carry convic- 
tion. All scientific references and notes have been 
excluded. Yet no statement has been made which 
could not be substantiated by reference to the origi- 
nal authors from whom all our information is de- 
rived. It is hoped that those readers who are 
attracted by the subject, and wish to carry their 
studies further, will be able to use the present volume 
as a starting point for investigations of their own. 

W. IHNE. 



Felseck, Heidelberg: 
September 12, 187s. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE CAUSES OF THE GREATNESS OF ROME. 



The greatness of the Roman empire, . 

Its influence on modern civilization, 

The Roman law, 

Political wisdom of the Roman people, 

Value of the history of Rome, 

The small beginning of Rome, 

The advantage of Rome over other Italian cities, 

Geographical situation, 

Race, ..... 

Men of genius, 

The site of Rome, 

Proximity of the seven hills to each other, 

Political association, 

Secondary causes, . 



PAGE 

I 
I 
2 

3 
3 
3 
4 
4 
4 
5 
6 
6 

7 

8 



CHAPTER II. 



SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF ROME. 



The meaning of history, 

Character of early history, 

The credulity of the old historians, 

Origin of historical criticism, 

Niebuhr, 

Niebuhr's influence, 

Sir G. C. Lewis, 



Contents. 



Line of demarcation between fable and history, 

Tests of historical truth, 

Contemporary evidence, 

Second-hand evidence, 

Tradition, . 

The oldest Roman annalists, . 

Fabius Pictor, 

Cincius Alimentus, 

Porcius Cato, 

Later annalists, 

Historical poems, . 

Sources of the annalists, 

Scarcity of fiction pure and simple 

Existence of a traditional story before Fabius, 

Non-existence of a national epos, 

Oral tradition, ...... 

Importance of the knowledge of precedents and customary 
The senate as conservator of the memory of the past, 
The sacerdotal corporations, .... 

Probability of a pontifical narrative, 

Oral tradition alone insufficient to account for the detail 
the annals, ..... 

The pontifical or great annals, .... 

Age of the pontifical annals, .... 

Other public documents, ..... 

Laws and treaties, . 

Laws of the twelve tables, . 

Apocryphal laws of the kings, 

Legendary relics, ...... 

Public monuments, ..... 

Fixity and continuity of the Roman families, 

Their aristocratic spirit and pride, 

Family portraits, ...... 

Solemn funerals, ..... 

Funeral orations, ...... 

Written laudations, ... 

Family chronicles, ...... 



PAGE 
12 
12 

13 
. 14 

14 
. 15 

15 
. is 

15 
. 15 

16 

. 17 
18 
18 
18 

. 19 

laws, 19 
20 
20 
21 



of 



Contents. 



XI 



Tl eir antiquity, ...... 

And character, ...... 

General character of the earliest annals, 
Family traditions confined to the republican period, 
Different treatment of the regal and the republican period in 
the annals, ...... 

Reasons for noticing the legends of the kings, 



PAGE 
28 
29 
29 
30 

3° 
31 



CHAPTER III. 



THE LEGENDS OF THE SEVEN KINGS OF ROME. 



The legend of Aeneas the Trojan, . 

Birth of Romulus and Remus, •> 

Dispute between Romulus and Remus 

Building of Rome by Romulus, 

Death of Remus, . 

The asylum of Romulus, 

Rape of the Sabines, 

Tarpeia, 

War of the Romans and Sabines, . 

Mettius Curtius, 

Union of the Romans and Sabines, 

The laws of Romulus, . 

Death of Romulus, 

The first interregnum, 

Numa Pompilius, the second king, 

His sacred laws, 

His civil laws, 

The peace of Numa, 

Tullus Hostilius, the third king, . 

War with Alba, 

The Horatii and Curiatii, . 

Crime of Horatius, 

Treason of Mettius, 

Destruction of Alba, . 

Tullus s wickedness and death, 

Ancus Marcius, the fourth king, 



31 
32 
33 
34 
34 
34 
34 
35 
35 
36 
36 
36 
38 
38 
39 
39 
40 

4i 
4i 
42 

43 
43 
44 
45 
45 
46 



Xll 



Contents. 



War with the Latins, .... 

Lucumo of Tarquinii, . ... 

Lucius Tarquinius, the fifth king, . 

Wars with the Latins and Sabines, . 

The reforms of Tarquinius, 

Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, 

The great sewer, forum, and circus, 

Miraculous birth of Servius Tullius, . 

Servius Tullius, the sixth king, 

The centuriate assembly of the people, 

Murder of King Servius, .... 

Lucius Tarquinius, the seventh king, . 

Conquest of Gabii, .... 

Establishment of Roman power over Latium, 

Purchase of the Sibylline books, . 

Message to Delphi, ..... 

Outrage of Sextus on Lucretia, 

Expulsion of the king and establishment of the republic 

Conspiracy for the restoration of the king, 

The patriotism of Brutus, .... 

Banishment of the house of the Tarquinii, 

War with Tarquinii and Veii, .' 

War with Porsenna of Clusium, . 

Horatius Codes, ..... 

Mucius Scaevola, ..... 

Cloelia, ...... 

The Etruscans defeated at Aricia, 

Latin war. ...... 

Battle of Lake Regillus, .... 



PAGE 
46 
46 

47 
47 
48 
49 
49 
49 
51 
52 
54 
55 
56 
57 
57 
58 
58 
60 
60 
61 
61 
62 
62 
63 
63 
64 
65 
65 
65 



CHAPTER IV. 

EXAMINATION OF THE LEGENDS OF THE KINGS. 
Absence of contemporary records, 

Rationalist explanation of fables, .... 
Moral impossibilities, ..... 
Chronological impossibilities, .... 

Other objections, . . . 



66 
66 
67 

68 
70 



Contents. 



PAGE 

Omnipotent lawgivers, ..... 70 

Laws and religion as primeval as language, . . .70 

Aetiological myths, ...... 71 

The rape of the Sabines, . . . . .72 

The Lacus Curtius, .... 73 

Greek stories, ....... 74 

The legend of Romulus not of Roman origin, . . 75 

Meagreness of Roman imagination, . . . .76 

Repetitions, ...... 76 

Identity of Romulus and Tullus, . . , -77 

Of Numa and Ancus, .... 77 

Of the two Tarquins, Romulus and Tullus, . . -78 

Servius Tullius, ...... 78 

The latter part of the history of the kings as fabulous as the 

first, ....... 79 

The miraculous origin of the Servian constitution, . . 79 

Expulsion of Tarquinius equally miraculous, . . 80 

Incredibility of the foreign history, . . . .81 

The war of Porsenna resulted in the subjugation of Rome, 81 
The Latin war full of fictions, .... 

CHAPTER V. 

THE FIVE PHASES OF THE HISTORY OF ROME 
IN THE REGAL PERIOD. 

Most ancient state of Latium, 

A confederacy under Alba as head, . 

Rome a Latin settlement. .... 

Invasion of Latium by Sabines^ 

Alliance of Romans and Sabines, . 

Alliance developed into a federal state, 

The sacerdotal king superseded by a military king 

The Etruscans, ..... 

Etruscan dominion in Latium, 

Reforms of Tarquin and Servius, 

Effect of the military monarchy, .... 90 

The revolution, . . . . . .90 

The republic, ...... 90 



83 



85 

85 
85 
86 

87 
87 



XIV 



Contents. 



CHAPTER VI. 
RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN THE TIME OF THE KINGS. 

PAGE 

Materials for a sketch, . 

The epic poetry of Greece, 

Conservative spirit of the Romans, 

Great antiquity of religious institutions, . 

Supremacy of religion in the East, 

Every religion purely national, 

Hierarchical character of civil communities 

Political institutions originally religious, . 

The religion of the Romans, . 

Adoption of the Greek mythology, 

Minute religious observances, . 

Meaning of the word " religion," . 
\ Religion as a legal system, 
\ Pontiffs and other priests, 
v \i Various forms of divination, 

The auspices, .... 

Abuse of the auspices, . . . 

Genuine faith of the old time, 



©2 
9 2 

93 

94 
94 
94 
95 
95 
96 

97 
98 

99 
99 
100 
101 
102 
103 
104 



CHAPTER VII. 
CHARACTER OF THE MONARCHY. 

The king was high priest, 

Inauguration of the king, .... 
Mode of election, .... 

Criminal judges appointed by the king, 
Military commanders, .... 
Sacerdotal kings superseded by military chiefs, 



104 
105 
105 
105 
105 
106 



Pontiffs appointed after the abolition of the sacerdotal royalty 107 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SENATE OF THE REGAL PERIOD. 

The fathers de facto representatives of the great houses, . 109 

The authority of the fathers, .... no 

The interregnum, . . . . . .110 

Conflict between the senate and the later kings, . . ill 



Contents 



xv 



CHAPTER IX. 
THE PEOPLE IN THE REGAL PERIOD. 

The people. Patricians and plebeians, 

Patrician assembly of curiae, . . . 

The three different popular assemblies, 

Rights of the plebeians, 

Origin of the plebs, 

The clients, ...... 

The military kings the patrons of the plebs, . 

CHAPTER X. 

THE MAGISTRATES OF THE REPUBLIC 

Change in the executive, 

The consular office, 

Limited in time, 

Its partition among two colleagues, 

Right of intercession, . 

The dictatorship, 

Origin of the dictatorship, 

Valerius Poplicola, 

The Valerian laws, 

Duties of the consular office 

Administration of justice, 

Private jurisdiction, 

The priests public servants, 

The pontiffs the interpreters of divine and human law 

And the guardians of science and learning 

The augurs, .... 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE SENATE OF THE REPUBLIC. 

The senate a consultative body, . 

Number of senators, ..... 

New senators added after the expulsion of Tarquin were not 
plebeians, ....... 



PAGE 
112 
112 

114 

ii5 

"5 

. n6 



117 

117 
117 
u8 
n8 
n8 
119 
120 
120 
121 
122 
122 
122 
123 
124 
124 



127 
127 



127 



XVI 



Contents. 



Nor were the hew members plebeians raised to the rank of 

patricians, ...... 128 

The senate purely patrician and champion of patrician in- 
terests, ....... 129 

The title patres conscriptl, ..... 129 

Difference of the senate from modern parliaments, . . 130 

The senate not a representative assembly, . . 130 

Mode of electing senators, ..... 131 

Character and stability of the senate, . . . 131 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE POPULAR ASSEMBLIES OF THE REPUBLIC. 

The proper functions of the popular assemblies, 
The comitia curiata superseded, .... 
The comitia centuriata, .... 

Military character of the comitia centuriata, 
Functions of the comitia, .... 

Alleged origin of the comitia curiata, 
Forms observed at the meetings of the comitia centuriata, 
Prevalence of patrician power in the state, 
Probable origin of the comitia centuriata, 
The assembly of centuries ceases to be military and becomes 
purely political, ..... 



132 
132 
133 
133 
134 
134 
136 
136 
138 

139 



CHAPTER XIII. 



THE TRIBUNES OF THE PEOPLE 



Secession of the plebs, 

The causes of the secession, 

Original power of the tribune, 

Plebeian aediles, 

The sacred law, .... 

Antiquity of the tribuneship, . 

Control of the conscription by the tribunes, 

Number of tribunes, 

Original mode of election, 



-.. 


140 


. 


. 141 




142 


. 


. 142 




142 


. 


. 143 




144 


. 


. 144 




145 



Contents. xvii 

PAGE 

The comitia curiata, ...,,. 145 

Division of the land into local tribes, . . . 146 

Plebeian character of the comitia tributa, . . . 146 

The comitia tributa recognized as a sovereign assembly, . 147 

Number of local tribes, ..... 148 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE AGRARIAN LAW OF SPURIUS CASSIUS. 

Wealth and poverty, ...... 148 

Disposal of conquered land, .... 149 

Rise of discontent among the plebeians, . . . 149 

The agrarian laws, ...... 150 

The proposals of Spurius Cassius, .... 150 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE LEAGUE WITH THE LATINS AND HERNICANS. 

Prevalence of confederations, ..... 151 

Rome the head of a pre-historic league, . . . 152 

New league between Rome and Latium, . . . 152 

Motives for concluding the league, . . . 152 

Object and effect of the league, .... 153 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE WARS WITH THE VOLSCIANS AND AEQUIANS. 

The story of Coriolanus, ..... 155 

Criticism of the story of Coriolanus, . . . 158 

Effect of the Volscian wars, ..... 159 

The story of Cincinnatus, ..... 159 

Exaggerations of the story, ..... 161 

Character of the Aequian wars, . . . . 162 

B 



XV111 



Contents. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

WAR WITH THE ETRUSCANS. 



The Etruscan town of Fidenae, 
Roman fort on the Cremera, 
Story of the Fabii, 
Historical foundation of the story, 



PAGE 

. 162 
163 

. 163 
164 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE DECEMVIRS AND THE LAWS OF THE TWELVE TABLES. 
451-442 B.C. 

The Publilian law, . , . . . .165 

Advancing claims of the plebeians, . . . 166 

The Terentilian rogations, . , , . . 167 

The Claudian family, . . . . . 168 

Concessions to the plebs, ..... 168 

Election of decemvirs, , 169 

The laws of the Twelve Tables, . . . .169 

Perplexities of the annalistic accounts, . . . 169 

Embassy to Athens, ...... 170 

Reasons for rejecting the story, .... 170 

The traditional story of the decemvirs, . . .171 

Criticism of the story, ..... 174 

The laws of the last two tables, .... 174 

Probable causes of the overthrow of the decemvirs, . 175 



CHAPTER XIX. 

EXTENSION OF PLEBEIAN RIGHTS FROM 449 TO 390 B.C. 

Bearing of the decemviral legislation on public and private laws 176 

Quaestors elected by the people, .... 176 

Right of appeal confirmed and extended, . . . 176 

Restoration of the tribuneship and aedileship, . . 177 

Sovereignty of the assembly of tribes acknowledged, . 177 

Extension of the legislative and elective functions of the 

assembly of tribes, ..... 178 



Contents. xix 

PAGE 

Gradual abolition of patrician privileges, . . 178 

Canuleian law on the intermarriage of patricians and plebeians, 178 
Agitation for a share in the executive, . . . 179 

The office of military tribunes with consular power, . 179 

Policy of the patricians to make the laws nugatory, . 180 

Explanation of this result, .... 181 

Spurius Maelius, ...... 182 

The censorship, ...... 183 

Duration of the office of censors, .... 184 

Extent of the power of the censors in drawing up the list of 
citizens, .... 

Nomination of senators, 

Revision of the centuries of knights, 

The censorship of morals, 

Financial duties of the censors, . 

Limitation of the censorship to eighteen months 

Doubling of the number of quaestors, 



185 

. 186 
187 

. 188 
188 

. 188 
1S9 
Plebeians elected to the office of military tribunes, . . 189 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE FOREIGN RELATIONS OF ROME DOWN TO THE CONQUEST 
OF VEIL 

The position of Rome in Latium, .... igo 

Condition of Latium, ..... 190 

Decay of the Volscians and Aequians, . . . 191 

Increased preponderance of Rome, . . . 191 

Acquisition of the territory of Corioli, . . . 192 

Conquest of Labici, Bolae, and other towns in Latium, 192 

Conquest of Fidenae, ..... 193 

The spolia opima of Cornelius Cossus, . . . 193 

The city of Veii, ...... 194 

Hostilities between Veii and Rome, . . . 194 

New military organization of Camillus, . . . 195 

The Roman armies, ..... 196 

Introduction of military pay, ..... ioj 



XX 



Contents. 



Siege of Veii, 

Miraculous capture of Veii, 

Criticism of the story, 



PAGE 
197 
198 
199 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE INVASION OF THE GAULS. 

Decline of Etruscan power, ..... 202 

Migration of the Gauls, ..... 202 

Their invasion of Etruria, ..... 203 

Cause of war with Rome, ..... 203 

Battle of the Allia, ...... 204 

Rome abandoned, ..... 205 

Defence of the Capitol, ..... 206 

Camillus appointed dictator, . . . . 207 

The Capitol saved by M. Manlius, .... 207 

Ransom paid to the Gauls, .... 207 

Expulsion of the Gauls, ..... 208 

Criticism of the story, ..... 208 

The destruction of Rome less complete than reported, . 209 

Long duration of the blockade improbable, . . 210 

The story of Camillus, ..... 210 

Contradicted by Polybius, . . . . 211 

The story of the geese an aetiological legend, . .211 



Index, 



215 



MAP. 
Ancient Latium and adjoining districts, 



Frontispiece 



EARLY ROME. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE CAUSES OF THE GREATNESS OF ROME. 

The Roman Empire in the early ages of our era em- 
braced all the countries round the Mediterranean Sea, 
together with vast tracts north of the Alps, stretching in 
one direction as far as the Danube, and even beyond 
that river in its lower course, and in another as far as 
the Atlantic Ocean, St. George's Channel, the Solway 
Frith, and the North Sea. In this great „ 

The greatness 

empire was gathered up the sum total that of the Roman 
remained of the religions, laws, customs, Ian- m P ire - 
guages, letters, arts, and sciences of all the nations of 
antiquity which had successively held sway or predomi- 
nance. It was the appointed task of the Romans to col- 
lect the product of all this mass of varied national 
labour as a common treasure of mankind, and to deliver 
it over to the ages which were to follow. 

When after the lapse of centuries Europe gradually 
emerged from the flood of barbarism which had over- 
whelmed it, and new nations were formed out of the 
wreck of the Roman Empire, it was the trea- _ . _ 

1 Its influence 

sure of ancient learning saved by Rome on modem 

which guided the first steps of these nations 

towards new forms of civilized life. The language and 



2 Early Rome. ch. i. 

literature of Rome had never been altogether lost and 
forgotten. By slow degrees the tongue of Latium was 
moulded into the dialects of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and 
France. The Christian Church pertinaciously clung to 
the old language which was that of her ritual and of the 
Latin Fathers. The city of Rome had become the seat 
of the successors of St. Peter, and her language pene- 
trated wherever Roman Catholic missionaries preached 
the Gospel of Christ. It became the vehicle of all the 
learning of the time, the language of diplomacy, of law 
and government ; finally, of education ; and in the 
schools and universities of modern Europe the whole 
world of Latin literature was fostered into a second life, 
and acquired an influence on the public mind of which 
every living man still in some way or other feels the 
effects. But the Latin literature, though great and ad- 
mirable in many respects, is not the grandest product of 
the Roman mind. It was not original nor spontaneous, 
and consequently not truly national. In poetry, philoso- 
phy, and history the Romans were the disciples and 
imitators of the Greeks. They added little of their 
own. Their strength and originality lay in another 
direction. They proved themselves masters in the art 

of civil law and government. The Roman 
lTw 6 Roman law possesses an intrinsic excellence which 

has made it the foundation of all legal study 
in Europe, and the model of almost all codes of civil 
law now in force. Every one of us is benefited directly 
or indirectly by this legacy of the Roman people, a 
legacy as valuable as the literary and artistic models 
which we owe to the great writers and sculptors of 
Greece. 

The stupendous growth of the Roman Empire, and 
the solidity of its structure, which enabled it to last so 



CH. I. The Causes of the Greatness of Rome. 3 

long, are due not so much to the courage 
and endurance of the Roman soldiers, or domoftfi? 5 " 
to the genius of the Roman generals, as to Roman peo- 
other causes, and chiefly to the combination 
of a desire for improvement with respect for established 
rights : in short, to political wisdom, which prefers reform 
to revolution, which is not dazzled by speculation on 
impossible perfection, and which never sacrifices what 
is good in order to attain what may appear to be best. 
The development of the Roman constitution differs in 
this respect from the usual course of Greek policy, and 
reminds us of the spirit in which the English constitu- 
tion was built up, in which whatever is new is an out- 
growth and development of something old, and in which 
mere speculation and theoretic enthusiasm have never 
been able to sever the link which connects the present 
with the past. 

The history of the Roman people, then, has surely 
many claims on our attention. It is to a 
certain extent the history of every modern history°of 
nation in its earlier stages, and it contains Rome- 
lessons of policy, which even after so many centuries are 
instructive and may prove applicable in the political 
conflicts of the present day. 

No great state known to history can be traced to such 
a small beginning as Rome. When the _, 

. The small 

kings of Persia and of Macedon built up beginning of 
their respective monarchies, they worked 
with the national power which they found ready for them, 
waiting only to be organized and directed. The Cartha- 
ginians started on their career of enterprise and con- 
quest with the experience, the skill, and the wealth of 
their Phoenician mother country. The Romans, on the 
other hand, when they emerged to power in Latium and 



4 Early Rome. ch. i. 

Etruria, could boast neither of a numerous nor a civilized 
ancestry ; they had found no accumulation of wealth 
ready for their use, no political experience which they 
might have applied. They had everything to make 
from the beginning ; they had to form a nation and a 
national character, to create national wealth, to acquire 
political experience. They succeeded in all this, and so 
vigorous was the spirit which animated the citizens of 
that single city, that it infused itself into the population 
of all Italy, and to a certain extent of the ancient world, 
and thus the language, customs, thought, and religion 
of numerous nations were Romanized, and exhibit traces 
of their origin even at the present day. 
What was the cause, we may well ask, that gave such 
a superiority to Rome over other cities of 
SS of Rome ^aly? Why did not Veii, or Naples, or 
over other Syracuse become the nucleus of a great 

Italian cities. J ° 

empire ? Had Rome an advantage over 
them with regard to soil, climate, or geographical situa- 
tion ? This question must be answered in 
£u°S hical tne negative. The soil in the neighbourhood 
of Rome was comparatively sterile, the cli- 
mate unhealthy, the situation unfavourable for com- 
merce. The city had no good port, nor was there a 
large fertile country behind it which might have supplied 
materials for export and markets for foreign goods. 

If Rome had no such advantages, was it to any 
advantages of race and descent that she owed her emi- 
nence ? Again we must answer in the nega- 
tive. The people of Rome were of the same 
race as their neighbours. They could boast of no supe- 
riority on the score of descent. For a long time indeed 
the fable of the descent from Aeneas and his Trojan 
followers had currency. This fable is now exploded, 



CH. i. The Causes of the Greatness of Rome. 5 

and if it were not, we should hardly infer that for their 
political and military greatness the Romans were in- 
debted to Oriental ancestors. More recently an admix- 
ture of Etruscans has been inferred from indications 
more or less significant. But this admixture has not as 
yet been proved by any satisfactory evidence, and more- 
over the political and religious systems, as well as the 
language of the Etruscans, were entirely different from 
those of the Latin or other neighbouring tribes. The 
Sabines and Latins, who combined to form the funda- 
mental element of the Roman people, were offshoots of 
the Sabellian stock to which all the native or aboriginal 
population of Italy belong, from the Apennines south of 
the Po to the extreme end of the peninsula. 

It was therefore not superiority of race which gave 
the Romans predominance in Italy. We must look for 
another cause. Perhaps we may be led to 

, . r „ Men of genius. 

surmise that it was a fortunate succession of 
great men which raised the Romans above the other 
Italian communities. We know that the Persian, the 
Macedonian, the Arab empires owed their rapid rise to 
the genius of individuals. In modern Europe the ag- 
grandizement of Prussia is due in some considerable 
degree to the eminent political and military qualities of 
the Hohenzollern dynasty. But Rome was singularly 
sterile in great men. She was made powerful and pre- 
dominant by the almost unheeded labour of a vastnumber 
of citizens of average ability, not by men whose names 
have the ring of Solon, Pericles, Epaminondas, or Alex- 
ander ; or, if we compare modern times, of Charlemagne, 
Peter the Great, Frederic, or Washington. The kings and 
statesmen to whom the establishment of the State and 
the laws is ascribed, such as Romulus, Numa, Servius, 
and Brutus, belong not to authentic history, but to pre- 



6 Early Rome. ch. i. 

historic fable ; and when politicians arose who exerted 
an influence beyond that of private citizens in the ser- 
vice of the State, men who, like Sulla and Caesar, 
wielded in their hands the power of the whole commu- 
nity, the greatness of republican Rome had passed away. 

If then the first cause of Roman greatness, the first 
impulse given to national development, is to be found 
neither in the advantages of soil and situation, nor in the 
superiority of race, nor in the genius of great men, shall 
we be driven to say that it was mere chance, or, in more re- 
verent language, Divine providence which selected Rome 
as the seat of empire over Italy and the world ? Such 
a conclusion would not be a solution of the problem, but 
an evasion of the difficulty and a confession of weak- 
ness unworthy of the spirit of historical enquiry. Provi- 
dence does not act contrary but according to fixed laws, 
and it is for us to investigate these laws, not to ignore 
them. Nor is it utterly impossible to discover the cause 
to which Rome owed in her infancy such an accession of 
strength as secured to her the superiority over her 
neighbours, and thus laid the foundation of her future 
greatness. 

If we compare the site of Rome with the sites of the 
numerous cities which simultaneously with the earliest 
settlements on the seven hills covered the 
Rome te ° f plain of Latium and the adjoining hills, we 
find that each of the other towns was built 
on some steep or easily defended hill. Some of these 
hill-towns, such as Praeneste, were actually stronger 
than either the Roman Capitol or the Palatine hill. But 
nowhere do we find, as on the Tiber, a group of hills 
„ . . c possessing- each the advantage of defensi- 

Proximity of r _ _ *=> ° , 

the seven hills bility, and vet lying so close to one another 

to each other. , , ,..,.,. - , 

that the political isolation of each was 1m- 



ch. i. The Causes of the Greatness of Rome. 7 

possible and that some kind of combination or federation 
for the maintenance of internal peace became absolutely 
necessary. People who live at a distance from each 
other may indulge in occasional strife ; but if by prox- 
imity of habitation they are compelled to have daily 
intercourse with one another, they are obliged to agree 
upon some terms of amicable life, if they do not prefer 
the miseries which internecine war must entail on all. 
This was the condition of the various settlements on the 
seven hills, which lay so near together that nature itself 
seemed to have destined them to form a combined city. 
There are dim, half fabulous traditions which speak of 
wars waged between the people of the Ouirinal hill and 
that of the Palatine. But the same traditions also report 
an amicable settlement of the combats, an agreement to 
live in peace, a combined government of the respective 
chiefs ; in fact, they describe a confederation of the two 
peoples, and their combination into one political com- 
munity. Nor are these facts traceable only in the tra- 
ditions of the Roman people; they are equally so in their 
institutions. The association of the Roman gentes (houses) 
to form curice (wards), and of these to form the three 
tribes of Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres, together with 
other indications of a gradual union of independent 
bodies to form the Roman people, show clearly enough 
that the principle of association lay at the root of the 
early vigour of Rome, and gave to the combined people 
of the Romans and the Sabines {populus Romanics Qui- 
ritium) such a preponderance over each isolated Latin 
city, that Rome alone became fit to be the head of Latium. 
Thus then arose a spirit of political association based 
upon calculations of interest but sanctioned by the sense 
of right; nor when it had accomplished Political asso- 
rts first task, the security of the seven hills, ciation - 



8 Early Rome. ch. I. 

did it die away, but continued to work on a larger scale 
when Rome had become great City after city and tribe 
after tribe were invited or compelled to join the leading 
power as allies {socii) until the whole of Italy, though 
in fact subject to Rome, appeared to be only one vast 
confederacy. 

We have seen that the geographical position of Rome, 
and the peculiarity of race, cannot be deemed to have 
been the first causes of Roman greatness. Now, how- 
ever, after we have discovered the first cause, we may 
and must admit that both these circumstances power- 
Secondary fully contributed as secondary causes to ac- 
causes. celerate and consolidate the growth of Rome, 

when it had taken root owing to the peculiar formation 
of the ground. The comparative sterility of the terri- 
tory encouraged the warlike spirit of the early Romans, 
whose frequent wars seem to have been undertaken of- 
tener for the sake of booty than in just self-defence. It 
is possible too, that the unhealthiness of the surrounding 
district at certain seasons of the year may have served 
as a barrier to ward off attacks, when other resources 
failed. The remoteness of the sea and the want of a 
good port was a protection from the numerous pirates 
who infested the Tyrrhenian waters. But it was espe- 
cially the situation of Rome in the middle of the penin- 
sula, cutting off the northern from the southern half, 
which enabled her to divide her enemies and to subdue 
them separately. Lastly, the similarity of race, which 
bound the Romans by the ties of blood and common 
customs to the Latins and the Samnites, the Campanians, 
Lucanians, and in fact to all the indigenous races of 
Italy, enabled them to repel the invasions of their non- 
Italian enemies, the Gauls and the Carthaginians, and 
to appear in the light of champions and protectors of 



ch. ii. Sources of the History of Rome. 9 

Italy. When in the time of the first historical inroad of 
the Gauls the onset of these barbarians had been broken 
by the brave defenders of the Capitol, Rome rose from 
her ashes as by a second birth with the title to pre-emi- 
nence among all the peoples of Italy ; and when the proud 
and able Hannibal was foiled before the same walls, 
Rome in a still more signal and decisive manner fought 
at the head of the Italians against the common foe. 



CHAPTER II. 

SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF ROME. 

We purpose, in the present volume, to trace the history 
of Rome through its earliest stages, from the foundation 
of the city to its destruction by the Gauls, or, Tte meaning 
in the language of the old annalists, from of "history." 
Romulus, its first founder, to its second founder, Camil- 
lus. We shall have to review a period of nominally 
three centuries and a half, a period as long as that which 
separates us from the Protestant Reformation, from 
Luther and Charles V. and Henry VIII. It is the pe- 
riod in which those institutions were formed which proved 
the strength of the strongest republic of all ages. It is, 
therefore, a period replete with interest for those students 
of history who desire to penetrate, as it were, into the 
workshop of the national mind, and to watch its opera- 
tions. And yet we can hardly speak of a history of this 
time, except in so far as we attach to the word " history" 
the original meaning which it bore in the Greek lan- 
guage, and which is synonymous with "investigation." 
History, in its modern sense, not only endeavours to as- 
certain events accurately, but also to show how each 



io Early Rome. ch. ii. 

successive event was the product of what preceded and 
the cause of what followed. Such a concatenation of 
cause and effect is possible only where the facts can be 
ascertained not only with certainty, but also with cir- 
cumstantiality. Where these conditions do not exist, in- 
quiry may still be carried on with profit and with plea- 
sure ; truth may be elicited and errors laid bare ; but 
the full delight and the satisfaction produced by genuine 
history are wanting. 

The introductory chapters in the history of every coun- 
try necessarily consist of such investigations. They are 
Character of tne dawn preceding the day ; they contain 
early history, truth mixed with fables in every-varying 
proportions ; they are often more perplexing and irrita- 
ting than instructive and pleasing, and yet we must make 
our way through them, for as every succeeding event 
can only be understood if we know that which preceded 
and prepared it, we are impelled to ascend the stream 
of history as high as we can, even if the source itself 
should be hidden and inaccessible. 

The ancient historians, and the modern ones too, un- 
til quite recently, were not disturbed by any doubts con- 
The credulit cernm g the truth of the early chapters of 
of the old his- the history of Rome. They related, with 
implicit and childlike faith, the foundation 
of the city, which took place, they say, on the 21st of 
April in a year calculated as identical with the second 
year of the seventh Olympiad, or 754 years before the 
Christian era. They related the wars of Romulus, the 
legislation of Numa, the conquests of Tullus, and, in 
short, the deeds of all the kings with the same air of faith 
with which they described events reported by eye-wit- 
nesses. It is true they were occasionally puzzled by 
contradictions in the narrative, or startled by some down- 



CH. ii. Sources of the History of Rome. 1 1 

right incredible statement ; they were consequently forced 
to abandon as mere ornaments the reported miracles, 
but they never doubted that what remained of this nar- 
rative was substantially true. This simple faith was the 
delight of Cicero and Livy, of Dionysius and Plutarch, 
and of all the following ages down almost to our own. 
Neither the cautious and sober-minded Bacon nor the 
learned Milton doubted the truth of a story hallowed by 
the implicit faith of so many ages. And yet the revival 
of learning in the fifteenth century had hardly taken 
place before some acute and bold inquirers began in a 
modest and tentative way to point out errors Origin of histo- 
and improbabilities in some of the received rical criticism. 
accounts. Yet a few isolated glimpses of light left the 
general darkness unbroken. Even the more compre- 
hensive view of the unhistoric character of the early 
history of Rome, which was taken by the Italian philo- 
sopher G. Vico (d. 1744) produced no effect upon the 
general convictions of historians. Vico's remarks were 
still unheeded when two Frenchmen — Pouilly in 1729, 
and Beaufort in 1738 — published treatises on the uncer- 
tainty of the first five centuries of Roman history, in 
which, for the first time, a series of doubts was not only 
expressed, but supported by sound arguments. Yet even 
Pouilly and Beaufort seemed to have found no followers. 
Neither the philosophic jurist Montesquieu (d. 1755), nor 
the sceptic historians Hume (d. 1776) and Gibbon (d. 
1794), seem to have been shaken in their faith. At last, 
in 181 1, B. G. Niebuhr published the first 
volume of a learned and searching criticism Niebuhr - 
into the history of Rome, in which he showed how ut- 
terly untenable the stories are whrch had so long passed 
unchallenged as the history of the Roman kings and of 
the first ages of the republic. Niebuhr's book was writ- 



12 Early Rome. ch. ii. 

ten at the right time. The minds of the literary world 
were prepared to receive the truth, and from that mo- 
ment to the present the critical, that is, the rational, study 
of Roman history has gained ground more and more ; 
every year has added contributions to our knowledge of 
Roman institutions, laws, government, antiquities, and 
the languages of ancient Italy. The same method of 
critical investigation has since been applied to the his- 
tories of Greece and other nations; and though Nie- 
buhr's views have, in many respects, been modified and 
rejected, the ante-Niebuhrian mode of treating history, 
and especially the history of Rome, has been abandoned 
by the unanimous consent of modern historians. 

When Niebuhr's book first appeared, it caused amaze- 
ment and not a little regret, that such a number of sto- 
Niebuhr's r i es > endeared like household words to our 

influence. earliest recollections, should be rejected as 

useless and idle fancies. This feeling, however, which 
in sterner minds assumed even the character of indig- 
nation and stubborn conservatism, has almost subsided. 
The critical method has so far gained ground that, on 
the whole, Niebuhr is more blamed for retaining so much 
of the old faith than for overturning so many vain idols. 
Sir G. c. The most advanced in this line of criticism 

Lewis. j s gj r G eor g e Cornewall Lewis, who, in his 

able and comprehensive book "on the Credibility of 
Early Roman History," published in 1855, discussed the 
question in all its bearings, and came to the conclusion 
that a genuine and truthworthy history of Rome does 
not begin before the war with Pyrrhus ; that is to say, 
the second half of the fifth century after the foundation 
of the city. 

In this conclusion Sir G. C. Lewis seems to have gone 
too far. It is, of course, difficult to draw the exact line 



ch. II. Sources of the History of Rome. 13 

which divides darkness from light and error Line of demar- 
from truth, when one passes into the other febJe^nJhJ! 11 
by imperceptible gradations. Wherever we tor y- 
may draw the line, some truth will always be found to 
be mixed up with error, and some error to contain par- 
ticles of truth ; and in proportion as men are severe or 
lax in their canons of criticism, they will be inclined to 
limit or to extend the legitimate domain of history. Af- 
ter all, sufficient data remain for sketching the outline 
of historical events from the beginning of the republic, 
and to form a conception of the condition of the Roman 
people even in the age of the kings. 

The first question we have to answer, if we would 
judge of the credibility of a statement claiming to be 
considered historical, is not whether it is 
probable or likely; for the fictions of a Tests of his- 

w J toncal truth. 

novel or poem may be extremely likely 
without having the least pretence to veracity. We 
must ask, What is the evidence upon which the state- 
ment rests ? Were the witnesses able and were they 
willing to tell the truth ? All historical narratives must 
be derived from contemporary evidence, 
from persons who have heard or seen what Contemporary 

r evidence. 

they report and who do not purposely cor- 
rupt, distort, or altogether falsify the facts. Inaccuracy, 
incompleteness, faulty apprehension, we must expect 
and excuse even in the best of witnesses, for experience 
shows that facts, as they pass through the observing and 
reasoning mind of witnesses inevitably assume that par- 
ticular form and colour which the individuality of these 
witnesses gives to them. We may even expect contra- 
dictions as to detail, degree, and manner. In partial 
and passionate witnesses we may look for involuntary 
or even voluntary misrepresentations. All such diver- 
c 



14 Early Rome. ch. ii. 

gencies in the statements of eye-witnesses it is the duty 
of the historian to weigh against each other, and from 
their combination to work out the truth. 

This task becomes more difficult and the result more 
precarious, if we obtain our evidence not from eye- 
witnesses, but at second-hand from persons 

Second- . 

hand evi- who report not what they have seen and 

heard, but what has been related to them 
by others. All the causes which tend to distort truth 
are now doubled, or more than doubled. To the errors, 
wilful or involuntary, of the original witnesses are added 
those of the secondary witnesses, and the errors increase 
in number and magnitude the further our witnesses are 
removed in time and place from the original actors of 
the events which they relate. It is, indeed, possible' 
that even when accounts have been thus transmitted 
through a line of successive reporters, they may still in 
the main bear some resemblance— nay, that they may 
give the substance or the main features of the original 
facts. In such a case we have before us a 
genuine tradition, which is available for 
many purposes of historical study, and which consti- 
tutes the chief portion of all true historical knowledge 
possessed by any people before history begins to be cul- 
tivated as a branch of literature. But it is evident that 
very little trust can be placed in the detail of such tradi- 
tions, and that perfect accuracy even in the essential 
parts can hardly be expected. 

Let us now see what degree of confidence the history 
of the regal period of Rome may claim on the score of 
external evidence. 

More than five hundred years had passed since the 
alleged foundation of Rome in 754, before the first rude 
and feeble attempts were made by a Roman to write a 



CH. II. Sources of the History of Rome. 15 

continuous history of the people from the 
earliest ages. Fabius Pictor, a member of R e m ° ah est 
one of the noblest families, himself actively annalists, 
engaged in the military and civil service of the State, 
during the war with Hannibal, wrote a his- 
tory of his time, and prefixed to it bv wav Fabius 

_ . , . , . } Pictor. 

of introduction a short narrative of the 
whole preceding period. A similar work was under- 
taken by Lucius Cincius Alimentus, a contem- 
porary of Fabius Pictor. Both these au- Cincius Ali- 

mentus. 

thors wrote not in Latin, but in Greek, 
evidently because the Latin language in their time 
seemed not sufficiently cultivated for literary composi- 
tion, and because they had before their eyes as models 
the great historians of Greece. The first who applied 
the Latin language to historical composition 
was Marcus Porcius Cato, the famous censor. Porcius 

Cato. 

who as a young man had served in the war 
with Hannibal, and died shortly before the final destruc- 
tion of Carthage (149 B.C.), of which he was one of the 
chief instigators. Cato may be looked upon as the 
originator of Latin prose writing for literary purposes, 
and it is curious and instructive to notice that the 
Romans occupied this field nearly 300 years later than 
the Greeks. Cato wrote the history of his time, giving a 
prominent place in it to his own exploits, and even to 
his own speeches, and he, like his predecessors, pre- 
fixed several chapters on the history of the earlier ages, 
including therein accounts of the origin of other Italian 
cities besides Rome, whence the title of the book, 
" Origines," was derived. 

From this time forward we find a conside- 
rable number of Roman writers engaged in annalists. 
the same task. The most prominent among 



1 6 Early Rome. ch. ii. 

them were Lucius Cassius Hemina, Lucius Calpur- 
nius Piso, Valerius Antias, Quintus Claudius Ouadriga- 
rius, and Caius Licinius Macer, reaching from the time 
of the Punic wars to the age of Sulla. Their writings, 
like those of their predecessors, are lost ; but it appears 
from some notices in extant writers, and from a few 
remaining fragments, that the object of these men was 
more to compose striking and entertaining narratives, 
and to natter the national pride of their countrymen, 
than to give plain and faithful accounts of the events. 
They endeavoured to distinguish themselves as writers 
of the Latin tongue, and to rival their Greek models. 
In this endeavour, it must be admitted, they signally 
failed. Though they preferred not only rhetorical 
nourishes to simple style, but also fictitious and orna- 
mental detail to truth gained by patient research, they 
are looked down upon by Cicero and Tacitus as meagre 
and frigid chroniclers. As their works followed one 
another, they grew in bulk and pretensions, but not in 
trustworthiness. Some of them, in the time of civil 
commotions, were influenced even by party spirit. This 
class of writers, designated by the common name of 
"annalists," supplied the extant historians, especially 
Livy and Dionysius, with the materials for their works. 
And it appears that unfortunately Livy followed chiefly 
the fuller and more elaborate, but less truthful accounts 
of the younger annalists, especially those of Valerius 
Antias, the least conscientious of them all. 

Whilst the annalists set themselves the task of simply 
recording the history of their own or preceding times, 
we find that contemporaneously with Fabius and Cincius, 
two poets, Naevius and Ennius, moulded 
p0 em S nCa the same materials into epic poems. Nae- 

vius (d. 204 B.C.) wrote the history of the 



CH. II. Sources of the History of Rome. 17 

first Punic war in the old Saturnian verse, the national 
metre of the Romans, which was soon superseded by the 
hexameter, imported from Greece. Ennius, a younger 
contemporary of Naevius (d. 169 B.C.) composed a 
poem in hexameters on the second Punic war. Both 
poets prefixed to the account of their own time the 
legendary and traditional history of early times from 
Aeneas downwards. Of these poems a few scanty frag- 
ments are preserved, from which we can gather that 
their authors adopted in the main the current notions 
of the early history of Rome, and that they adorned the 
facts according to the exigencies of their poetical aims. 
But it seems unlikely that they had access to any other 
sources of information than the annalists, and therefore 
their works could not have been more authentic and 
trustworthy as sources of the history of Rome: nor does 
it appear that any either of the annalists or the extant 
historians looked upon them or cited them as historical 
witnesses. 

In so far as the annalists and annalistic poets related 
the events which happened in their own 
time or in the age immediately before their Sources of the 

, J annalists. 

own, they may have been trustworthy wit- 
nesses ; but we may ask what they could possibly know 
of events preceding their birth by centuries. What, for 
instance, were the sources from which Fabius Pictor, in 
the second century before Christ, derived the details of 
the war with Pyrrhus in the third, or of the wars with the 
Samnites in the fourth, of the Volscian and Aequian wars 
in the fifth, and the whole chronicle of the kings in the 
sixth, seventh, and even eighth centuries before the 
Christian era ? 

Of one thing we may be quite certain ; the annalists 
did not simply invent the substance of their narrative, 



1 8 Early Rome. ch. n. 

certainly not the whole of it. The task would 

Scarcity of fie- ' . . 

tion pure and have been too much for the dry, frigid, and 
simple. unproductive imagination of a Roman. If, 

on the other hand, a Greek had concocted the account; 
it would have been far more lively than it is, more in- 
teresting, and full of startling occurrences, and would 
shine in all the varied hues of the exuberant fancy with 
which that brilliant race was endowed. The stories were 
evidently not invented by Romans, nor could they, such 
as we know them, have been invented by Greeks. Be- 
sides which, on the whole, the divergencies and contra- 
dictions which they contain affect only the detail of the 
narrative. A uniform character and spirit pervade all 
the legends, making it probable that Fabius and Cin- 
cius, as well as Naevius and Ennius, when they began 

to write, found a ready-made tradition, with 
Sdidonaisto^ fi xe d popular notions about the principal 
ry before Fa- events of the old period, and moreover a 

vast number of names and dates, round 
which the narrative was grouped in a generally accred- 
ited digest. How shall we account for the existence of 
such a popular, unwritten history at the time of the first 
attempts at historical composition ? 

It was one of Niebuhr's favourite theories that a great 
portion of the traditional history, embodied in their 
works by the first annalists, was derived from national 
epic poetry. Cato and Varro refer to a custom which, 
XT . _ they say, prevailed among their ancestors, 

Non-existence . . 

of a national of singing the praises of great men at festive 

epos. _ 

banquets to an accompaniment of the flute. 
But we cannot form the slightest conception of the char- 
acter of these songs. We do not even know whether 
they were epic or lyric ; we are not informed that they 
were made use of by any of the annalists ; and what is 



ch. ii. Sources of the History of Rome. 19 

a still more decisive objection, the character of the writ- 
ings of the annalists is eminently dry and unpoetical, 
with very few exceptions. After all, if Niebuhr's theory 
were true, it would prove that no reliance could be placed 
on the alleged poetical stories, for poetry, though it may 
be based on fact, contains so large an element of fiction, 
and combines truth and fiction so intimately, that no 
critical test will enable us to extract from it genuine his- 
torical truth. 

In the absence of epic poems, which might explain 
the preservation of the facts of ancient Roman history, 
we are thrown back upon ordinary oral 
tradition. This alone, as we have seen, un- 
aided by some external and artificial mode of recording 
facts, is sure to degenerate very soon. What, for exam- 
ple, would be our notions at the present day of the Re- 
volution of the seventeenth century, if we had to derive 
cur knowledge of it through oral tradition alone ? But, 
it may be objected, we neglect oral tradition because we 
do not require it in our literary age. There is consider- 
able weight in this objection. The Romans, in the ages 
before the application of the art of writing to literature, 
were no doubt compelled to cultivate tradi- Jm ortance of 
tion, if they wished to preserve the memory the knowledge 

., j-^of precedents 

of the past, and we may give them credit and customary 
for this from what we know of their national aw 
pride. Moreover, the constitution of Rome, like that of 
England, as we have pointed out already, was never 
subverted entirely by revolutions which swept away the 
existing institutions and obliterated the memory of the 
past. All the laws that were in force at any particular 
time had their roots in previous phases of the common- 
wealth. Precedents were of much value in deciding 
questions of the day, and it was necessary for public 



20 Early Rome. CH. n. 

men to be familiar to a certain extent with the history of 
previous legislation and the events and conditions which 
brought it about. 

This familiarity with the deeds of their forefathers 
was greatly facilitated in Rome by the fixity of the Ro- 
man families, by the composition of the senate, and by 
the organization of the priestly bodies. 

Of the fostering care given to the memory of their an- 
cestors by the great families of Rome, we shall have to 
speak by-and-by. The senate, as we shall see, consisted 
_ of men chosen for life. It was never wholly 

The senate as J 

conservator of renewed. It never died. It contained all the 
&epast!° ry ° ™en who had served the state from their 

youth upwards in peace and war, who were 
familiar with the laws, and consequently with the his' 
tory of their people. In their debates previous events 
must have been constantly referred to ; and though the 
past naturally slips by degrees into the background of 
memory, yet such startling events as the Gallic invasion, 
or the conquest ofVeii, or the secession of the plebeians, 
or the legislation of the decemvirs, could never be eiv 
tirely forgotten. 

Still more preservative of the memories of the past 
were necessarily those "collegia" or corporations of 

priests, who, like the augurs, were intimately 
The sacerdotal connected with every public transaction, or 

corporations. J r ' 

who, like the pontiffs, were the keepers and 
expositors of all divine and human law. The pontiffs, 
as we shall presently see, were ^specially charged with 
keeping a public register of important passing events, 
and although these registers contained Drobably not so 
much political as sacerdotal information, respecting tem- 
ples, omens, or other such matters, yet it is not unlikely 
that the college of pontiffs was the first to work up and 



CH. II. Sources of the History of Rome. 21 

digest into a consecutive narrative the va- 
rious isolated facts which had been trans- a pontifical ° 
mitted from preceding times in one way or narratlve - 
another, and that the men who took a leading part in 
public affairs were more or less familiar with a current 
narrative generally believed to be the history of the Ro- 
man people. 

Nevertheless we cannot imagine that tradition alone 
would have sufficed to produce a continuous and con- 
nected narrative of the transactions of sev- 
eral centuries, however faithfully it might ^ne insuffi-° n 
preserve the memory of great national events cient l ° ac ; 

r m . count for the 

and eminent public men. The Roman an- detail of the 
nalists gave year by year the names of the 
consuls, often men of no great repute, and related many 
events which are anything but striking or picturesque. 
Tradition alone would not be able to preserve such a 
string of names unbroken and unentangled for a great 
number of years. It would, however, be pushing doubt 
too far if we were to look upon all those names and sto- 
ries as fictitious. Moreover the chronological order in 
which they are related, though sometimes interrupted 
and sometimes confused, is after all not so hopelessly 
irregular or contradictory as to be irreconcileable with 
the natural and probable development of Roman affairs. 
Its very irregularities, the blanks and contradictions it 
contains, are in its favour. Were it a deliberate fabrica- 
tion, it would be much more smooth and plausible. It 
produces on the whole the impression of a genuine though 
very imperfect record. To strengthen this confidence, 
we must inquire whether any such genuine records ex- 
isted at the time when the annalists began to write, and 
what is their character and trustworthiness. 

It was an ancient custom at Rome, continued down 



22 Early Rome. ch. ii. 

to the time of the Gracchi (131 B.C.), for the Pontifex 
Maximus, the head of the pontifical college 

The ponti- . ' r ° 

fical or great or corporation, to write down every year the 
annals. most remarkable events and to publish them 

on wooden tablets for the information of the people. 
These tablets were preserved in the Regia, the official 
dwelling of the chief pontiff, near the temple of Vesta 
on the Roman forum. The attention of the sacerdotal 
chroniclers, it is true, was directed not so much to politi- 
cal transactions as to occurrences which were looked 
upon as manifestations of the divine will, such as dearth, 
famine, pestilence, inundations, earthquakes, and eclipses 
of the sun and moon. The anger of the gods on such 
occasions was averted by expiatory sacrifices which the 
pontiffs prescribed. It is not unlikely that foreign wars 
and civil disturbances may likewise have been noticed 
in these annual registers, and at any rate it would seem 
that to fix the date of any entries the names of the chief 
magistrates must have been given, as the Romans 
marked the successive years not by numbering them 
from a fixed era, but by the names of the magistrates of 
each year. 

Thus a meagre, but at any rate a trustworthy abstract 
of the most striking events must have been compiled 
from the time when these pontifical annals (called also 
Annates Maximi, after the Pontifex Maximus) were first 
kept. And, if we could trust a statement of Cicero, the 
custom of keeping such annals would date from the very 
foundation of Rome. 

This, however, we cannot accept as true. For, not to 
speak of the regal period, the annals of the republic 
during the first two centuries exhibit so many discrepan- 
cies and contradictions in the names of the annual ma- 
gistrates, so many repetitions, so many gaps and palpa- 



ch. ii. Sources of the History of Rome. 23 

ble errors, that the idea of their being based 

. n , 1 Age of the 

on contemporary evidence is altogether in- pontifical 
admissible. We are driven to the conclu- annals. 
sion that the pontifical annals are not of the antiquity- 
assigned to them by Cicero, or that the older ones had 
been lost when the annalists began to write. 

Now this inference is borne out by external evidence* 
Livy relates, that in the Gallic conflagration most of the 
public and private records were consumed by the flames. 
That the pontifical annals were included in this gene- 
ral calamity there can be no doubt, for they were written 
on wooden tablets, and the hurry of the Romans in their 
flight was so great that they had difficulty even in saving 
the sacred fire of Vesta. What could have induced 
them to burden themselves with these clumsy historical 
archives, when they could hardly save their bare lives ? 
No room, therefore, is left for doubt that all the contem- 
poraneous records which may have existed before the 
Gallic war perished at that time, and that the books 
given out at a later period as copied from the pontifical 
annals must have been compiled afterwards from 
memory or from other sources. 

Other materials for the oldest annals existed in the 
shape of various official documents, books of law based 
on precedents, books containing rules and 
regulations for different public functiona- Other public 

° r documents. 

ries, census lists, and, above all, official 
lists of the annual magistrates. Some of these books 
may have been kept in the Capitol, which resisted the 
onset of the Gauls. But the greater part of them must 
have been renewed after the war, and therefore they 
cannot claim to be considered unimpeachable contem- 
porary evidence. 

Another kind of documents which may have helped 



24 Early Rome. ch. n. 

to preserve the memory of bygone times consists of laws 

and treaties cut in stone or engraved on metal tablets. 

Among the most important of these were 

Laws and tne i aws f the twelve tables, which are said 

treaties. 

to have been exhibited in the Forum. Cop- 
per at that time had the value of money ; it is therefore 
. . not likely that these tablets escaped the 

Laws of the J r 

twelve rapacity of the Gauls, who whilst they be • 

sieged the Capitol ransacked all Rome for 
hidden treasures. We may be sure that the twelve 
tables of the Decemvirs did not escape ; but as they 
contained the fundamental laws of the republic, we may 
be equally sure that they were speedily restored, and 
moreover that they were restored faithfully. 

The same authenticity cannot be attributed to the so- 
called Laws of the Kings [leges regies), which are often 

mentioned by later writers and unhesita- 
lawToPthe tingly assigned to one or another of the seven 
kings. kings as their author. They are all of a 

more or less religious character, are no doubt of great 
antiquity, and refer to those rites and religious customs 
which precede all secular legislation. As the Roman 
kings were not only civil magistrates, but more em- 
phatically the high priests of the nation, these laws were 
supposed to have been enacted by them ; but they ap- 
pear never to have been committed to writing in any 
authoritative form by order of the State, and if any col- 
lection existed in the Gallic war, its testimony would 
have no value as to events of the regal period. 

Several ancient writers have left us descriptions of 
monuments of the primeval age of Rome, including 

statues of kings and heroes and relics of 
relufs! ary various kings, such as the augural staff of 

Romulus, his straw-thatched hut, the fig- 



ch. ii. Sources of the History of Rome. 25 

tree at the roots of which Faustulus found the basket 
contained Romulus and Remus. The value of such 
pretended documents of antiquity will not be rated high 
even in an age in which relics not less wonderful abound 
and are venerated by thousands. The Romans were 
as childlike in their craving for the wonderful as our 
own superstitious classes, and this craving was amply 
satisfied by priestly and antiquarian craft. Hence, 
though genuine movements may preserve the memory 
of historical events, it is clear that not much of trust- 
worthy history can have been elicited from the objects 
just enumerated. 

Of a very different value, no doubt, are public monu- 
ments which contain inscriptions, provided that the age 
of the monuments and the genuineness of 
the inscriptions are beyond doubt. But the Public 

r J monuments. 

statues of the Roman kings on the Capitol 
contained no inscriptions, and the inscriptions on co- 
lumns and shields which writers like Livy and Diony- 
sius refer to as genuine, can be shown to be fabrica- 
tions of comparatively recent time. 

We have now reviewed in succession the different 
sources from which the materials employed by the first 
annalists of Rome may be supposed to have been drawn. 
We have found them all very scanty, and it will go hard 
for the credibility of the early annals if we cannot dis- 
cover any other sources more copious and clear. 

Reference has already been made to the solid struc- 
ture of the Roman families. The Romans are the only 
people of antiquity where all families were 

iii-ii 1 1 Fixity and 

regularly designated by and propagated un- continuity 
der a permanent family name. Whereas Roman 
in Greede names as a rule were simply des- families - 
ignations of individuals, and a man would show that he 



26 Early Rome. ch. ii. 

belonged to a particular family only by adding his fa^ 
ther's name to his own, seldom using a patronymic, the 
Romans had but a very small number of individual, 
personal names ; but everyone bore the name of that 
particular family to which he belonged, such as Horatius, 
Valerius, Fabius, and the like. The families, not the in- 
dividual citizens, formed the units of which the Roman 
people was made up. Each family was a small com- 
munity in itself, organized for economic and social 
purposes under the government of the " paterfamilias," 
who had power of life and death, and was the sole 
owner of the family property as long as he lived. The 
family dwelt under the same roof often long after the 
sons were married : its members cultivated in common 
the family estate, and they were bound to each other by 
the strongest ties of mutual duty and interest. 

The aristocratic spirit which pervades all Roman his- 
tory is derived from the position and influence which the 

great families, so firmly and permanently 
tocratic" 53 " organized, exercised in public affairs. They 
pride and **ad ex ^ stea ^ m isolation and independence 

before they combined to form a federal 
community; and they retained a great portion of their 
original spirit ever afterwards. Religion lent her aid to 
strengthen this spirit. Adhering strictly in this respect 
to the earliest form of Aryan civilization, every family 
had its own peculiar deity, its family altar, and its family 
grave. No stranger was allowed to share in the worship 
of the family, or to be laid in the family tomb. The 
strictness with which strangers were excluded from the 
inner communion of a family was proportioned to the 
strength of the attachment which bound the members 
together, and the veneration felt by all for the head of 
the family was transferred to his memory after his death. 



CH, II. Sources of the History of Rome. 27 

His grave was a sacred spot, and annual offerings were 
made to his spirit. Nor was his memory allowed to fall 
into oblivion. Not only was it the practice for the son 
to add the father's name to his own, and to call himself, 
for instance, Lucius Manlius, the son of Marcus (M. f.), 
but he added the grandfather's name as well. And those 
families which could boast of a distinguished progenitor 
who had served the State in one of the higher 
places of trust, preserved a bust or rather Family por- 
mask of the departed in the atrium, or 
great hall of the house, and registered his name and the 
titles of the offices he had filled by degrees with a gal- 
lery of family portraits which formed a kind of pedigree, 
and were the boast and pride of the survivors. 

When a member of the family died, the niches in 
which the masks were kept were opened. Persons 
dressed in the official robes of the departed 
placed the masks before their faces, and fon!ra£ 

thus representing the members of the for- 
mer generations of the family accompanied the body of 
the recently deceased to the market-place. There the 
eldest son or some other member of the family as- 
cended the pulpit and delivered a funeral oration in 
which he set forth the dead man's virtues and services. 
Nor did he limit himself to the deeds of one 
ancestor ; but ascending the stream of his- Funeral ora- 

' & tions. 

tory he traced the great men of his house 
to the earlier days of the republic, and dwelt upon their 
exploits. Such speeches, technically called "lauda- 
tions," kept alive the memory not only of the doings of 
one family, but of the whole people ; they were a kind 
of popular history viewed from the standpoint of a single 
family. And as each noble house contributed its share, 
the smaller streams of family histories naturally united 
and formed a broad channel of national traditions. 



28 Ea7'ly Rome. ch. ii. 

The frequent occurrence of such solemnities would 
naturally suggest the advisability of putting down in 
writing the leading features of these lauda- 
dations 1 laU " tions, for the purpose of assisting the me- 
mory and enabling successive speakers to 
do full justice to those whom they were called upon to 
honour. Thus arose family chronicles, which, as we are 
distinctly informed, were kept in some noble 
chron^ies houses, but which we may safely infer, 

were common in all. They were preserved 
in the tablinum, the place for the family archives, and 
they most likely formed the chief written materials from 
which Fabius and Cincius composed the first national 
annals. 

We do not know the precise age when these family 
chronicles were first composed, nor can we speak with 
more certainty of the time of the first writ- 
qulty anU " ten laudations. Even the antiquity of the 
solemn funerals is not attested by any 
external evidence. But there is nothing to prevent us 
from supposing that the practice of the solemn funerals in- 
cluding the laudations, was as old as the republic, and that 
the first written memorials of the family worthies were 
made as soon as the art of writing was applied to practi- 
cal use in public and private life, z. e. in the earliest ages 
of the republic. It is true we must admit that all such me- 
morials which existed at the time of the Gallic war, per- 
ished in the flames, except those which may have been pre- 
served in houses on the Capitoline hill. But after the 
restoration of the city we may be quite sure that most 
of what had been lost was restored, and restored from a 
memory which had been constantly refreshed by the 
periodical recurrence of the occasions for delivering 
laudatory speeches. Perfect accuracy, of course, was 



ch. II. Sources of the History of Rome. 29 

out of the question. Errors of various kinds would 
creep in, and would be perpetuated. Apart from such 
involuntary errors, the family traditions would be cor- 
rupted by wilful falsifications, by concealing disasters, 
by exaggerating successes, by repetitions 
and omissions of various kinds. It is ad- ^ charac - 
mitted by Cicero that the history of Rome 
has suffered in veracity from such private documents, 
and this defect is indeed palpable on the very face of it. 
But what we contend for is this, that the substratum of 
all these tales is real and not simply fictitious, that 
many of the errors can be detected and corrected, and 
that, even where the detail is lost, the general character 
of the events and the leading features stand out with 
sufficient distinctness. 

A patient examination of the early annals of Rome 
shows clearly that their origin from family chronicles is 
undeniable. The number of noble families 
sharing among themselves the high offices character of 
of state was so small that sometimes for the earliest 

annals. 

years together the same names occur in the 
lists of consuls, and so the history of these men is iden- 
tical with the history of the republic. Thus the Valerii 
and the Fabii at one time, the Furii and Manlii at 
another, practically ruled the state and filled the annals 
with their names. If we assume that the lists of magis- 
trates, imperfectly kept or preserved, but still preserved 
in some way, enabled the first compilers to reduce the 
varied and often conflicting statements of the family 
chronicles to some sort of order ; that the memorials in 
the hands of the pontiffs and other priests and magis- 
trates supplied materials of another kind; that oral 
tradition enlivened and diversified the dry outline, 
giving flesh and blood to the skeleton of names and 

D 



30 Early Rome. ch ii 

figures ; and that a little imagination and editorial skill 
smoothed down the rough parts of this heterogeneous 
mass, we can perfectly understand the genesis of the 
history of primeval Rome, we can account for every 
peculiar feature which marks it, and we shall wonder 
no longer at its defects, nor doubt the possibility of its 
trustworthiness in the general outlines. 

What we have just said with regard to the origin of 
the early annals applies strictly only to those of the 

republic, and not to the so-called history of 
tionT Confined tne Roman kings. This follows as a natural 
can h perio P d bli " consequence from the fact, that hardly one 

of the names of families which occur in the 
republican annals is found in the stories of the regal 
period. It is clear that the family traditions did not go 
further back than the establishment of annual chief 
magistrates. The yearly registers too, whatever may 
have been their value, did not include the period ante- 
rior to the establishment of the republic. The narrative 

of the kings passes over long periods of years 
treatment of m tota -l silence, whereas the republican an- 
the re eg ubb"can na ^ s S* ve m every year at least the names of 
period in the the consuls and generally make mention of 

annals. . , . 

some political or warlike transaction. There 
is, moreover, another fundamental difference. The 
republican annals, it is true, contain many improbabili- 
ties and some statements which are altogether incredi- 
ble ; but on the whole they are sober and keep within 
the bounds of what is possible and credible. The story 
of the kings, on the other hand, is unreal and improba- 
ble from beginning to end. Its whole plan, composition, 
and arrangement bears the stamp of bold and clumsy 
fiction. We have said above that internal probability is 
not in itself a proof of the historical truth of a nar- 



ch. in. Legends of the Kings. 31 

rative, for fiction may be made to resemble truth very 
closely. But if fiction is so childish and silly that it can- 
not be reconciled with what we all recognize as being 
in accordance with physical or moral laws, no amount 
of external attestation could make us accept it as truth. 
• Hence, in the absence of external evidence, we must 
apply the test of internal probability and possibility to 
the narrative of the kings of Rome. We must therefore 
make ourselves acquainted with so much of it as will 
supply us with materials for our criticism. 
We shall do this the more willingly as, apart noticing the 
from any historical value, the story of Ro- Jh^kingsf 
mulus and his successors has a certain de- 
gree of literary importance for us. It was believed al- 
most implicitly by the Romans themselves; it furnished 
their poets and orators with materials for declamation 
and ornament ; it forms part of the knowledge consi- 
dered essential even now for a good education ; and it 
will serve us as a background for the picture which we 
shall afterwards draw of the events more justly entitled 
to our attention and study. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE LEGENDS OF THE SEVEN KINGS OF ROME. 

At the time when the Capitoline and the neighbouring 
hills were covered with wood or pasture, all the country 
round about and all the cities of Latium The legend of 
were governed by the kings of the mighty ^J^n the 
city of Alba Longa, which stood on the 
banks of the Alban Lake, high on a hill overlooking the 



32 Early Rome. ch. hi. 

whole plain as far as the sea. The city of Alba was 
built by Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, the Trojan, who 
had escaped from the burning of Troy, and after many 
wanderings and adventures had settled on the coast of 
Latium, and there had built the town of Lavinium. Af- 
ter the death of Aeneas, his son had transferred the seat 
of his kingdom to Alba, and there his descendants ruled 
for 300 years in prosperity and peace. 

Now when the time was fulfilled in which, according 
to the decree of the gods, Rome should be built, it came 
to pass that after the death of Procas, the King of Alba, 
a quarrel arose between his two sons for the throne. 
Amulius, the younger, took the government from his 
elder brother Numitor, killed his son, and made his 
daughter, Rhea Silvia a priestess of Vesta, to the end 
that she should remain a virgin all her life, engaged in 
the service of the goddess who presides over the city 
hearth and loves purity and chastity in those who serve 
her. But the wicked king was not able to 

Birth of Ro- „ , f _ 

muius and Re- oppose the will of the gods. For Mars, the 
god of war, loved the virgin, and she bore 
twins. When Amulius heard this, he ordered the mo- 
ther to be killed ^and the twins to be thrown into the river 
Tiber. But the gods watched over the children, and the 
basket in which they were laid floated to the foot of the 
Palatine hill near the cave of the god Lupercus, and 
was caught by the branches of a fig-tree. The waters of 
the river now fell rapidly, and the twins were left upon 
the land. 

Attracted by their cry, a she-wolf came out from the 
cave of Lupercus and suckled them with her own milk 
and licked them with her tongue. When Faustu- 
lus, a shepherd who tended his flocks hard by, saw this, 
he scared away the animal and brought the children to 



ch. in. Legends of the Kings. 33 

his wife Larentia, and called them Romulus and Re- 
mus, and brought them up as his own children. Thus 
the boys grew up among the shepherds, and they dis- 
tinguished themselves by their strength and courage, 
and protected the weak against the lawless men who 
went forth to pillage and plunder. Then it came to pass 
that their enemies fell upon them while they were cele- 
brating the festival of the god Pan. Remus was taken 
prisoner and brought before his grandfather Numitor, 
and accused of having injured his cattle. But Romulus 
escaped. Now Faustulus delayed no longer, but told 
Romulus of his mother, and how he was destined to 
death by Amulius, and miraculously saved. So Romu- 
lus and his followers forced their way into the town of 
Alba, and set his brother free, and the two brothers hav- 
ing slain the unjust and cruel Amulius, placed their 
grandfather Numitor again upon the throne. 

But the brothers would not remain in Alba, and de- 
termined to build a new city on one of the seven hills 
by the Tiber, near the spot where they had grown up 
among the shepherds, and they were joined by many 
from Alba and from the whole country of the Latins. 

Now as Romulus and Remus were twins, and as nei- 
ther would yield to the other in honour and power, a 
quarrel arose between them and their fol- Dispute 
lowers which of them should give his name between 
to the new town and govern it. And they and Remus, 
determined to let the gods decide by a sign from the 
sacred birds. Then Romulus with his followers observed 
the heavens from the Palatine hill, and Remus took his 
station on the Aventine, and thus they both waited for a 
sign from heaven, from midnight until morning. Then 
there appeared to Remus six vultures, and he rejoiced 
and sent messengers to his brother announcing that the 



34 Early Rome. ch. hi. 

gods had decided in his favour. But at the same mo- 
ment Romulus saw twelve vultures, and it was plain that 
the gods gave the preference to Romulus. Therefore he 
built the town on the Palatine hill and called 

Building of . . . .. . 

Rome by it Rome, after his own name, and drew a 

Romulus. furrow round it with the sacred plough, and 

alono- bv the furrow he built a wall and dug a trench. 
But when Remus saw the doings of his brother, he mocked 
him, and leaped over the wall and the trench to show 
him how easily the town might be taken. 
Death of Then Romulus was wroth and slew his bro- 

Remus. 

ther, saying, "Thus perish everyone who 
may attempt to cross these walls." And this remained 
a warning word for all future times, that no enemy 
should venture to attack Rome unpunished. 

After this, Romulus, to increase the number of his 
people, opened a place of refuge on the Capitoline hill. 

And there came a great many robbers and 
The Asylum fugitives of all kinds from all the surround - 

of Romulus. ° 11 

ing nations, and Romulus received them all 

and protected them and made them citizens of his town. 

But there was a lack of women in the new community. 

Therefore Romulus sent messengers to the towns round 

about, asking the neighbours to give their 

Rape of the daughters in marriage to the Romans. But 

Sabines. & ° . , 

the messengers were sent back with scorn 
and charged to say, that there could be no union and no 
friendship with a band of robbers and outcasts. When 
Romulus heard this answer, he hid his anger and invited 
the dwellers round about to come to Rome with their 
wives and children to see the games which the Romans 
wished to celebrate in honour of the god Consus ; and 
there came a great number of Sabines who lived in the 
city of Cures among the mountains. Now when all eyes 



ch. in. Legends of the Kings. 35 

were fixed on the games, suddenly a number of armed 
Romans rushed forward and carried away the young 
women of the Sabines. After this the parents of the 
women hurried away from Rome, cursing the faithless 
town and vowing that they would take vengeance on 
Romulus and his people. When they had returned home, 
they gathered a great army and placed Titus Tatius their 
king at their head, and marched down the valley of the 
Tiber until they reached the Ouirinal hill. There they 
pitched their camp and laid siege to the Capitoline hill, 
which was held by the Romans. Now, one 
day when Tarpeia, the daughter of the Ro- arpeia. 

man captain, had gone out to draw water, the Sabines 
begged her to open a gate and to let them into the cita- 
del. Tarpeia promised to do this, and made them swear 
to give her what they wore on their left arms, meaning 
thereby their gold armlets and rings ; whereupon when 
the Sabines had penetrated into the citadel, they threw 
their heavy shields which they wore on their left arms 
on Tarpeia and killed her with the weight. So the trai- 
tress met with her reward. 

Now when the Sabines had won the Capitol, they 
fought with the Romans who lived on the Palatine, and 
the battle raoed up and down in the valley „ r , , 

, . o -X- J War f the 

which separates the two hills. One day, Romans and 
when Hostus Hostilius, a foremest champion a ines ' 
of the Romans, had fallen, his countrymen were seized 
with fear, and turned to flight. But at the gate of the 
town Romulus stopped, raised his hands to heaven, and 
vowed to build on this spot a temple dedicated to 
Jupiter Stator, that is, the Stayer of Flight, if he would 
be helpful to the Romans in this need. Then, as if a 
voice from heaven had commanded them, the Romans 
stayed their flight, turned round upon the Sabines, and 



$6 Early Rome. ch. hi. 

drove them back. And it came to pass that 
Cur"us S . Mettius Curtius, the leader of the Sabines, 

sank with his horse into the marsh which 
covered the lower part of the valley, and almost per- 
ished in the marsh. And the place where this happened 
was called for ever after the Lake of Curtius. 

When the battle had come to a standstill, and Romans 
and Sabines were facing each other ready to begin the 
fight afresh, the Sabine women rushed between the com- 
batants, praying their fathers and brothers on the one 
side, and their husbands on the other, to end the bloody 
strife, or to turn their arms against them who were the 
cause of the slaughter. Then the men listened to the 
voice of the women ; and the chiefs on each side came 
forward and consulted together, and made peace, and, 
to put an end to all disputes for ever, they agreed to 

make one people of the Romans and Sa- 
Romans and bines, and to live peaceably together as 
the Sabines. citizens of one town- T h us the Sabines 

remained in Rome, the city was doubled in size and in 
the number cf inhabitants, and Titus Tatius, the Sabine 
king, reigned jointly with Romulus. But as Tatius and 
his people came from Cures, the city of the Sabines, 
high up among the mountains, the united people were 
called the "Roman people and the Ouirites," and the 
name remained in use for all times. 

After a time Tatius had a quarrel with the men of 
Laurentum, who slew him when he was bringing offer- 
ings to the sanctuary of the Penates at Lavinium. 
Thenceforward Romulus reigned alone over the two 
peoples, and he made laws to govern them 
Romulus ° f * n P eace ant l war > an d first of all he di- 
vided them into nobles and commons ; the 
nobles he called Patricians and the commons Plebeians. 



ch. in. Legends of the Kings. 37 

Then he divided the Patricians into three tribes, the 
Ramnes, the Tities, and the Luceres, and in each of 
these tribes he made ten divisions, which he called Cu- 
ries. And the thirty Curies together formed the assem- 
bly of the people, and met to administer justice and to 
make laws. But all the patricians were equal among 
themselves, and every father of a family governed those 
of his own house, his wife, his children, and his slaves, 
with absolute power over life and death. And several 
families united together and formed houses, and the 
houses had their own sanctuaries, customs and laws. 
But the plebeians Romulus portioned out as tenants 
and dependants among the patricians, and called them 
Clients, and commanded them to serve their masters 
faithfully and to help them in peace and in war ; and the 
patricians he recommended to protect their clients 
against injustice ; and on that account he called them 
Patrons, that is, Protectors. From among the patricians, 
again, he chose a hundred of the oldest and wisest men, 
whom he called Fathers, and made them his council to 
advise him on all great matters of state and to help him 
to govern the city in time of peace. But out of the 
young men he chose a legion or army of 3000 foot sol- 
diers, and 300 horse, according to the number of the 
three tribes and the thirty curies, out of every curia 100 
foot soldiers and ten horsemen, and for the captain of 
the horsemen he chose a tribune of the Celeres (for this 
was the name of the horsemen). 

After the city had been so ordered and made strong 
to defend her freedom, Romulus governed wisely and 
justly for many years, and was beloved by his people as 
a father. He overcame his enemies in many wars, and 
conquered Fidenae, an Etruscan town on the left bank 
of the Tiber, not far from Rome. 



3& Early Rome. ch. hi. 

Now when all that Romulus had to carry out was 
fulfilled according to the will of the gods, it came to pass 
that he assembled the people to a festival of atonement 
at the Goat-pool, on the field of Mars, which extends 
from the town towards the north even to the Tiber. 
Then there arose suddenly a fearful storm, and the sun 
was darkened, and out of the clouds came lightning, and 
the earth quaked with the thunder. And the people 
were frightened and waited anxiously till the storm 
should clear away. But when daylight returned, Romu- 
lus had disappeared and was nowhere to be 
Death of found. And his people mourned for him. 

Then Proculus Julius, an honourable man, 
came forward and said that Romulus had appeared to 
him as a god, bidding him tell his people to worship him 
as Quirinus, and to practise valour and all warlike vir- 
tues, that they might please him and might gain for 
themselves the power over all other nations. Then the 
Romans rejoiced and erected on the Quirinal hill an 
altar to the god Quirinus, and worshipped him as their 
national hero and their protector for ever. 

When Romulus had left the earth and had become a 
god, the Fathers met together and appointed interme- 
diate kings from the senate, to reign in turn 
The first m- eacn for five days, in the place of the king, 

terregnum. * ' * i= >' 

till a new king should be chosen. This 
temporary government or interregnum lasted a whole 
year ; for the Romans were at variance with the Sabines, 
and quarrelled about the choice of the new king. At 
last they agreed that a Sabine should be taken, but that 
the Romans should choose him. 

There lived at that time in the land of the Sabines 
a righteous man called Numa Pompilius, who was 
honoured and beloved by everyone on account of his 



ch. in. Legends of the Kings. 39 

wisdom and piety. This man the Romans 

. Aii Numa Pom- 

Chose to be king over Rome. And when piiius,the 

Numa was assured of the consent of the 
gods by the flight of the sacred birds, he called together 
an assembly of the thirty Curies, and asked them whether 
they would willingly obey all his commands. Then the 
people consented, and Numa reigned in Rome forty- 
three years until his death. 

Now the Romans were a rude people : their thoughts 
were intent on war and plunder, and with them might 
went before right. Therefore Numa was 
grieved, for he wished to accustom the peo- . His sacred 
pie to milder habits and the fear of the gods, 
and to curb their spirit by the sacred laws of religion. 
But the people would not believe him and mocked him. 
Then he prepared a simple meal, and invited guests to 
his house, and placed before them plain food on earthen 
plates and water in stone bottles. And when they sat 
down to eat suddenly all the dishes were changed into 
silver and gold, and the plain food into choice viands 
and the water into wine. Then everyone knew that a 
divine power dwelt in Numa, and they were willing to 
receive his statutes. And Numa was wise from his 
youth upwards, as a sign of which his hair was grey 
from his birth, and he was trained in all the wisdom of 
the Greeks ; for Pythagoras, the wisest of the Greeks, 
had instructed him ; and Egeria, a Camena, that is a 
Muse, taught him the worship of the gods and the duties 
of a pious life. And once he deceived Faunus and 
Picus, the prophesying gods of the wood, by wine which 
he poured into the spring from which they drank ; and 
he intoxicated them and bound them, till they told him 
the secret charms by which they compelled Jupiter to 
reveal his will. 



40 Early Rome. CH. hi. 

Thus Numa was full of all wisdom, and taught the 
people which gods they should worship and what sacred 
rites they should perform to obtain their favour. And 
all bloody offerings he forbade, permitting only simple 
cakes and milk and other like offerings to be presented 
to the gods. Nor would he allow any images to be made 
of the gods, for he taught the people to believe that the 
gods had no bodies, and that as pure spirits they per- 
vaded all nature and watched over the destiny of men. 
Moreover he taught the people what prayers, solemn 
words, and ceremonies they should employ in all trans- 
actions of public and private life ; and he ordained that 
they should not undertake anything important without 
first calling on the gods and seeking their favour. 

Then Numa instituted priests to Jupiter, Mars, and 
Quirinus. And for the service of Vesta he chose pure 
virgins who should feed the sacred flame on her altar, 
the common hearth of the city. Also, in order to dis- 
cover the will of the gods, he instituted the office of 
augurs, and instructed them in the science of the flight 
of the sacred birds. And he appointed many more 
priests and servants of the altars, and prescribed to each 
what he should do ; and, that they might all know what 
was right in the service of the gods, and not from igno- 
rance employ the wrong prayers, or leave out or neglect 
any rite whereby they might incur the anger of the gods 
and suffer great punishment, Numa wrote all his statutes 
in a book, and handed it over to Numa Marcius, whom 
he made chief "pontifex,'' that is, overseer and watcher 
over the service of the gods. 

Moreover Numa encouraged the peaceful arts, that 
the people might live by the produce of their labour, and 
not think of robbing others. For this pur- 
laws. V pose he divided among the citizens the 



ch. in. Legends of the Kings. 41 

land which Romulus had conquered, and bade them 
cultivate it ; and he consecrated the stones which 
marked the boundaries of the fields, and erected an 
altar on the Capitoline hill to Terminus, the god of 
boundaries. 

In the same manner he took care of all artizans in 
the town who possessed no land. He divided them into 
guilds and set masters over them according to each kind 
of trade ; and in order that truth and good faith might 
be practised in common intercourse, and that promises 
might be kept as sacred as oaths, he founded the service 
of the goddess Fides, that is Faith, and built a temple to 
her on the Capitol. 

While Numa was thus occupied with works of peace, 
the weapons of war lay idle, and the neighbouring peo- 
ple were afraid of disturbing the tranquillity 
of this righteous king. So the gates of the ^Sma? 
temple of Janus remained closed, for it was 
the custom among the Romans to open them only in 
time of war. 

Thus the reign of Numa was a time of peace and hap- 
piness, and the gods testified their pleasure in the pious 
king and his people ; for they guarded the country from 
sickness and dearth, and blessed and prospered all that 
the people undertook. 

Now when Numa had become old and weak, he died 
without illness and pain, and the Romans mourned for 
him as for a father, and buried him on the hill Janiculus 
beyond the Tiber, on that side which lies towards the west. 

After Numa's death the Romans chose for their king 
Tullus Hostilius, the grandson of Hostus Hostilius, who 
fought in the battle with the Sabine. Mettius „ „ „ 

& Tullus Hos- 

Curtius. The time of peace was now at an tilius, the 
end, for Tullus was not like Numa, but like 



42 Early Rome. ch. hi. 

Romulus, and he loved war and the glory of war beyond 
everything. Therefore he sought causes of dispute 
among the neighbours, for he thought that in a long 
peace the Romans would grow effeminate and lose their 
ancient courage. 

Just then it happened that some Roman and Alban 
countrymen quarrelled and charged each the other with 
robbery. Therefore Tullus sent " fetiales," 
War with or heralds, to Alba, to demand compensa- 

tion for the plunder. The Albans likewise 
sent messengers to Rome to complain and to insist on 
justice. 

Then Tullus employed a stratagem. He received the 
Alban messengers with great kindness and treated 
them with such hospitality that they delayed the execu- 
tion of their disagreeable commission. But the Roman 
fetiales, who were sent to Alba, demanded without 
delay satisfaction from the Albans, and when this was 
refused they declared war in the name of the Roman 
people. When Tullus heard this, he asked the Alban 
ambassadors to deliver their message, and sent them 
home without giving satisfaction, because the Albans 
had first refused it, and had thus provoked an unjust 
war. Now the Romans and Albans met in the field. 
The Albans, led by their king Cluilius, encamped with 
their army on the frontier of the Roman territory, and 
made a deep trench round their camp. And the trench 
was called, for ever after, the " trench of Cluilius." But 
in the following night the king of the Albans died ; and 
they chose in his place a dictator, whose name was 
Mettius Fufetius. 

Now, when Tullus advanced, and the two armies 
stood arrayed against one another, and the bloody fight 
between the kindred nations was about to begin, the 



ch. in. Legends of the Kings. 43 

leaders came forward and consulted to- 
gether, and determined to decide the war by Th f„ H ° ra ^. ii 

o > ■> and Curiam. 

a single combat of Albans and Romans, lest 
too much blood should be spilt. There were by chance 
in the Roman army three brothers born at one birth, 
and likewise in the Alban army three brothers born at 
one birth. These were the sons of twin sisters, and 
equal in age and strength. Therefore they were chosen 
as the combatants, and the Romans and Albans bound 
themselves by an oath that the nation whose champions 
should be victorious should rule over the other. Then 
began the fight between the three Horatii, the champions 
of the Romans, and the three Curiatii, the champions 
of the Albans. On the first onset two of the Horatii fell, 
and the three Guriatii were wounded. Then the survi- 
ving Horatius took to flight and the Curiatii pursued 
him. But he turned suddenly around and killed the 
one of the three who was the most slightly wounded and 
had hurried on before the others. Then he ran towards 
the second and conquered him also, and at last he killed 
the third, who, on account of his wounds, was but able 
to pursue him very slowly. Then the Romans rejoiced 
and welcomed Horatius as conqueror, and they col- 
lected the spoils of the slain Curiatii and carried them 
before Horatius and led him in triumph to Rome. 

When the procession came near the gate of the city, 
the sister of Horatius went forth to meet it She was 
betrothed to one of the Curiatii who had been killed. 
And when she saw the bloody coat of her lover, which 
she herself had embroidered, she sobbed 
and moaned, and cursed her brother. At Crime of 

■ rioratrus. 

this Horatius fell into a violent rage, and 
drew his sword and stabbed his sister to the heart, be- 
cause she had wept over a fallen enemy. But the blood 



44 Early Rome. ch. hi. 

of the slain sister called for vengeance, and Horatius 
was accused before the criminal judges, who sentenced 
him to death. The people, however, rejected the sen- 
tence of the judges out of compassion for the aged 
father of Horatius, who had lost three of his children in 
one day, and because they would not see the man led to 
death who had ventured his life for the greatness of his 
country, and had gained the victory over Alba with his 
own hand. But to atone for his crime Horatius had to 
do public penance, to pass under a yoke, and to offer 
up expiatory sacrifices to the spirit of his murdered 
sister. The beam of the yoke under which Horatius 
passed remained as a token to the latest times and was 
called the " sister beam." But the memory of the hero- 
ism of Horatius was also preserved ; and the arms of 
the Curiatii were hung up on a pillar in the forum ; and 
the pillar was called the " pillar of Horatius " for all time. 
Thus Alba became subject to Rome, and the Albans 
were obliged to help the Romans in their wars. But 

Mettius Fufetius, the dictator of the Albans, 
Mettius 1 ° f meditated treason and hoped to overthrow 

the power of Rome. Therefore when war 
had broken out between the Romans and the Etruscans 
of Fidenae and Veii, and when the Romans and Albans 
were drawn up against the enemy, and the battle was 
raging fiercely, Mettius kept his army back from the 
fight, and hoped that the Romans would be subdued. 
But Tullus, perceiving the treason, bade his soldiers be 
of good courage, and conquered the Etruscans. And 
when Mettius came to him after the battle to wish him 
joy on account of the victory, thinking that Tullus had 
not discovered his treachery, Tullus ordered him to be 
seized and torn to pieces by the horses, as a punishment 
for wavering in his fidelity between the Romans and 



ch. in. Legends of the Kings. 45 

their enemies. Then the Albans were disarmed, and 

Tullus sent horsemen to Alba, who burned 

the whole town, with the exception of the j^g""** 011 of 

temples, and led the inhabitants away to 

Rome. From that time Alba Longa was desolate ; but 

the Albans became Roman citizens, and their nobles 

were received among the patricians, so that Albans and 

Romans became one people, as the Romans and the 

Sabines had become in the reign of Romulus. 

After this, Tullus waged many wars with his neigh- 
bours, the Etruscans and the Sabines, and he became 
proud and haughty, neglecting the gods and T .. , 
their service, and regarding not justice and wickedness 

, , _ ,__ _,, . , . and death. 

the laws of Numa. Therefore the gods sent 
a plague among the people, and at last they smote him 
also with a sore disease. Then he became aware that 
he had sinned, and he sought to find out the will of 
Jupiter, according to the spells of Numa. But Jupiter 
was wroth, and struck him with lightning, and destroyed 
his house so that no trace was left behind. Thus ended 
Tullus Hostilius after he had been king for thirty-two 
years; and Ancus Marcius, the grandson of Numa 
Pompilius, was chosen king in his stead. 

Ancus was a just and peaceful man, who made it his 
first care to restore in its purity the service of the gods. 
For this reason he caused the sacred laws of , 

Ancus Mar- 

Numa to be written on wooden tablets, and cius, the fourth 
to be exhibited before the people ; and he ing * 
endeavoured to preserve peace and the peaceful arts as 
Numa had done, whose example he wished to follow in 
all things. 

But it was not vouchsafed to him always to avoid war. 
For when the Latins heard that Tullus was dead, and 
that in his stead reigned a peace-loving king, who passed 



46 Early Rome. ch. in. 

War with the his time quietly at home in prayer and 
sacrifice they made a raid into the country 
of the Romans, and thought to plunder it with im- 
punity. Then Ancus left the management of the public 
worship to the priests, and took up arms and fought 
with his enemies, and conquered their towns and de- 
stroyed them. And many of the inhabitants he brought 
to Rome, and gave them dwellings on the Aventine hill. 
Therefore Ancus enlarged the city, and dug a deep 
trench in that part where the slope of the hills was not 
steep enough to protect Rome from her enemies. After 
this he fortified the hill Janiculus on the right bank of 
the Tiber, and built a wooden bridge over the river; 
and he conquered all the land between Rome and the 
sea, and planted a colony at the mouth of the Tiber, 
which he called Ostia, and made there a harbour for 
sea-going ships. And when Ancus had been king for 
four-and-twenty years he died calmly and happily like 
Numa, and the Romans honoured his memory, for he 
was just in time of peace, and vigorous and victorious 
in war. 

At the time when Ancus Marcius was king, there lived 

in the town of Tarquinii, in the land of the Etruscans, 

a rich and prudent man called Lucumo, the 

Lucumo of son f Demaratos, a noble of the race of 

larquinn. 

the Bacchiads of Corinth, who had been 
driven by the tyrant Kypselos out of his native town and 
had fled to Etruria. Now, because Lucumo was the son 
of a stranger, the people of Tarquinii disliked him and 
refused him a place of honour in their town. His wife 
Tanaquil therefore advised him to leave Tarquinii and 
to emigrate to Rome, where strangers were kindly re- 
ceived. Thereupon Lucumo set out for Rome. When 
he had come to the hill Janiculus, near the town, an 



ch. in. Legends of the Kings. 47 

eagle shot down from the air and took his hat from his 
head and flew away with it ; and after wheeling about 
for a time over the carriage in which Lucumo and his 
wife Tanaquil sat, the bird flew down again and replaced 
the hat on the head of Lucumo. Then Tanaquil, who 
knew the heavenly signs, foresaw that her husband was 
destined to attain high honours in Rome. 

Now in Rome, Lucumo altered his name, and called 
himself Lucius Tarquinius, after his native town, and he 
was soon highly regarded, for he was wise 

., . b . . . „ , . . Lucius Tar- 

in council, stout in war, and kind to his in- quinius, the 

feriors. For this reason King Ancus took fifth king " 
him for his counsellor, confided to him the most weighty 
matters, and before he died made him the guardian of 
his sons. Then Tarquinius contrived that the people 
should choose him, and not one of the sons of Ancus, 
for their king ; and thus the divine omen which Tana- 
quil, his wife, had explained to him, was fulfilled. 

When Tarquinius had become king, he carried on 
war with the Latins and conquered many of their towns. 
He made war also on the Sabines, who had 

, , . „ ... Wars with the 

invaded the Roman country with a large Latins and 
and powerful army, and had penetrated Sa ines ' 
even to the walls of the city. And when Tarquinius was 
with them and was in great danger, he vowed a temple 
to Jupiter, and so he overcame his enemies. Then he 
waged war against the Etruscans, and subdued the whole 
land of Etruria, so that the Etruscans acknowledged 
him as their king and sent him a golden crown, a sceptre, 
an ivory chair, an embroidered tunic, a purple toga, and 
twelve axes tied up in bundles of rods. Thus the em- 
blems of royal power were brought to Rome, and were 
displayed by the Roman kings as a sign of their do- 
minion over the people. 



48 Early Rome. ch. in. 

When all enemies were conquered, and Rome had 
increased in power, in size, and in the number of its citi- 
zens, Tarquinius determined to make a new 
The reforms division of the people, and to appoint other 

of larquinius. r x x x 

tribes in the place of the Ramnes, the Tities, 
and the Luceres, which Romulus had ordained. But 
the gods sent unfavourable signs, and the augur Attus 
Navius opposed the king and forbade any alteration of 
the old division of the people against the will of the 
gods. Then Tarquinius thought to mock and to humble 
the augur, and bade him consult the sacred birds, whe- 
ther what he then purposed in his mind could come to 
pass. And when Attus Navius had consulted the birds 
and had obtained an answer that the king's wish should 
be done, Tarquinius gave him a whetstone and a razor, 
and said, " This is what I purposed in my mind ; you 
shall cut through the stone with this knife." Then Attus 
cut the stone through with the knife and compelled Tar- 
quinius to give up his intentions. But the knife and the 
stone were buried in the Forum, and hard by the spot a 
statue of Attus Navius was set up to commemorate the 
miracle which he wrought. 

As Tarquinius could not alter the name of the old 
tribes nor increase their number, he doubled the num- 
ber of the noble houses in each tribe, and called those 
which he now admitted the younger houses of the 
Ramnes, the Tities, and the Luceres. He doubled also 
the number of the knights and of the senate, so that the 
division of the people which Romulus had made and 
the old names remained unaltered, except that in each 
division the number of the houses was doubled. 

Now, to fulfil the vow that he had made in the war 
with the Sabines, Tarquinius began to build a temple to 
Jupiter on the Capitoline hill. For this he levelled a 



ch. in. Legends of the Kings. 49 

place on the hill to lay the foundation of the temple. 
And as they were digging they found a hu- 

* , °° ° ' . Temple of 

man head. This was interpreted as a sign Jupiter on the 
that that place should be the head of all the apit ° ' 
earth. And the old sanctuaries which stood in the place 
where the temple of Jupiter was to be built were trans- 
ferred to other places, according to the sacred rites which 
the pontifices prescribed. But the altars of the god of 
youth and of the god of boundaries could not be trans- 
ferred. So they had to be left in their places, and were 
inclosed in the temple of Jupiter, and this was a sign 
that the boundary line of the Roman commonwealth 
should never recede and that its youth would be ever- 
lasting. 

Moreover, Tarquinius built large sewers underground, 
and drained the lower valleys of the city which lay be- 
tween the hills, and which till then were 
marshy and uninhabitable. And in the The great 

■* sewer, 

valley between the Capitoline and the Pala- forum, and 
tine hills he laid out the forum for a market- 
place, and surrounded it with covered walks and booths. 
He drained also the valley of Murcia, between the 
Aventine and the Palatine, and there he levelled a race- 
course, and introduced games like those of the Etruscans, 
which he celebrated every year, and called the " Ro- 
man " games. Thus Tarquinius reigned for thirty-seven 
years and gained great renown in peace and in war. 

Among the servants of King Tarquinius was a virgin 
called Ocrisia, who watched the holy fire sacred to the 
household god. Once, as she sat by the __ 

° ' . ' Miraculous 

hearth, the god appeared to her in the birth of Ser- 
flame. After a while she bore him a son, 
who grew up in the house of the king, and they called 
him Servius, because he was the son of a slave. One 



50 Early Rome. ch. hi. 

day, when the boy had fallen asleep in a chamber in the 
king's house, a flame played about his head till he 
awoke. And Tanaquil, the king's wife, saw from this 
that Servius was destined for great things. Therefore, 
when he was grown up to manhood, Tarquinius gave 
him his daughter in marriage, and intrusted to him the 
most important business of state, so that Servius was in 
the highest repute among the elders, as well as among 
the people. When this became known to the sons of 
King Ancus, who were wroth with Tarquinius because 
he had deprived them of their paternal heritage, they 
were afraid that Tarquinius would make Servius his suc- 
cessor. Therefore they resolved to have their revenge, 
and they hired two murderers, who came to the king 
disguised as shepherds, and said that they had a dis- 
pute and that the king should judge between them. 
Now, as they were wrangling with one another, and 
Tarquinius was attending to what one of them was say- 
ing, the other struck him with an axe, and they both 
took to flight. 

While the king lay in his blood, a noise and tumult 
arose in the town, and Tanaquil ordered the gates of the 
royal house to be shut, to keep out the people. And 
she spoke to them out of an upper window, and said 
that the king was not dead, but only wounded, and had 
ordered that Servius should reign in his stead until he 
had recovered. Therefore Servius filled the king's 
place, and sat as judge on the royal throne, conducting 
all affairs as the king himself was wont to do. But when 
it became known, after some days, that Tarquinius had 
died, Servius did not resign the royal power, but contin- 
ued to rule for a time, without being appointed by the 
people and without the consent of the senate. Then 
after he had won over a large number of the people by 



ch. in. Legends of the Kings. 51 

all kinds of promises and by grants of land, he held an 
assembly and persuaded the people to choose him for 
their king. 

Thus Servius Tullius became king of Rome, and he 
ruled with clemency and justice. He loved peace, like 
his predecessors Numa and Ancus, and _ . _„. 

x p hervius lulhus 

waged no wars, except with the Etruscans, the sixth 
These he compelled to be subject to. him, ing ' 
as they had been to King Tarquinius before him. But 
with the Latins he made a treaty, that the Romans 
and the Latins should live always in friendship with one 
another. And as a sign of this union, the Romans and 
the Latins built a temple to Diana on the Aventine, 
where they celebrated their common festivals, and 
offered up sacrifices every year for Rome and for the 
whole of Latium. 

Then Servius built a strong wall from the Quirinal to 
the Esquiline, and made a deep trench and added the 
Esquiline to the town, so that all the seven hills were 
united and formed one city. This city he divided into 
four parts, which he called tribes, after the old division 
of the people ; and he divided the land round about the 
city into twenty-six districts, and ordered common sanc- 
tuaries and holy days, and appointed chief men over the 
inhabitants of the districts which he had made. 

Now, as Servius was the son of a bondmaid, he was a 
friend of the poor and of the lower classes, and he es- 
tablished equitable laws and ordinances to protect the 
common people against the powerful. Therefore the 
commons honoured him and called him the good king 
Servius, and they celebrated the day of his birth as an 
annual festival. But the greatest work that Servius did 
was to make a new division of the people, according to 
the order of the fighting men, as they were arranged in 



52 Early Rome. ch. hi. 

the field of battle, and as they voted in the assembly of 
citizens when the king consulted them concerning peace 
or war, or laws, or elections, or other weighty matters. 
For this purpose Servius divided the whole people of 
_, . the patricians and the plebeians into five 

The centunate . 

assembly of classes, according to their property, with- 
peop e. Qut re g ar( ^ t0 bi^d or descent, so that from 
that time forward the three tribes of Romulus — the 
Ramnes, the Tities, and the Luceres — and their thirty 
curies, formed no longer the principal assembly of citi- 
ens, but lost their power in most matters that affected 
the government. 

The first class Servius made to consist of forty centu- 
ries of the younger men, who were under forty-six years 
of age, and of forty centuries of the older ; the latter for 
the defence of the town, the former for service in the 
field. The second, third, and fourth classes he divided 
each into twenty centuries, ten of the older men, and 
ten of the younger. But he made the fifth class stronger, 
for he gave it thirty centuries, fifteen of the older men 
and fifteen of the younger And the arming of the centu- 
ries was not the same in all the five classes, for only the 
men of the first class wore complete armour, composed 
of breast-plate, helmet, shield and greaves, with javelin, 
lance, and sword. The second class fought without the 
breast-plate and with a lighter shield. The third with- 
out the greaves, and so on, so that the men of the fifth 
class were but lightly armed. Now, as the citizens had 
to procure their own equipment for war, and as the com- 
plete armour was very costly, Servius chose for the first 
class only the richest citizens whose propertyvwas esti- 
mated at more than a hundred thousand asses, that is 
pounds of copper. The assessment for each of the fol- 
lowing classes was twenty-five thousand asses less, so 



CH. in. Legends of the Kings. 53 

that in the fifth class were those citizens who were as- 
sessed at less than twenty-five thousand asses. But 
those who had less than eleven thousand asses, Servius 
arranged in no class at all, but made of them a separate 
century — the century of the Proletarians — and these he 
exempted from all military service. 

Thus Servius arranged the infantry in 170 centuries, 
and for the horse he took the six double centuries of 
horsemen which Tarquinius had established, and to 
them he added twelve new centuries, chosen out of the 
richest families. The horsemen consisted all of younger 
men, for they had to fight only in the field. 

Moreover, as it was necessary to have trumpeters, 
armourers, and carpenters in the army, Servius made 
four centuries of them, so that altogether 193 centuries 
were formed. 

Such was the military order of the people. When 
they assembled for making laws or for elections, they 
observed the same order, each century having a vote ; 
and the chief influence was in the hands of the wealth- 
iest, who formed the eighty centuries of the first class, 
and the eighteen centuries of knights. But the poorer, 
people, although much more numerous, had but few 
votes. Thus their influence in the assembly was small, 
and the greatest number had not the greatest power. 
Nor was this arrangement unjust, for the rich provided 
themselves with heavy armour and fought in the fore- 
most rank, and when a war tax was laid on, they con- 
tributed in proportion to their property. And Servius 
showed his wisdom especially in this, that in the assem- 
bly of citizens he placed the older men and the younger 
on an equality in the number of their votes, although 
there were fewer of the older, according to the nature of 
things. For he wished that the experience and modera- 



54 Early Rome. ch. hi. 

tion of the older citizens should restrain the rashness of 
the younger. In this manner the people were arranged 
as an army for the protection of their country, and at 
the same time as an assembly of citizens, to decide all 
matters which concerned the well-being of the city ; 
and no man was entirely shut out from the common- 
wealth, but to each were assigned such burdens and 
services as he might be able to bear, and such a measure 
of rights and privileges as was just. The order of cen- 
turies which Servius Tullius had made remained for 
many ages the foundation of the Roman commonwealth ; 
and although, in the course of time, it was altered in 
many ways, it was never entirely abolished, so long as 
the people of Rome retained their freedom. 

Servius Tullius had two daughters ; of whom one was 
good and gentle, and the other haughty, imperious, and 
heartless. In like manner Aruns and Lu- 
King cius, the two sons of the elder Tarquinius, 

Servms. were of different character ; the one was 

good-tempered, and the other was vicious and violent. 
These sons of Tarquin Servius Tullius married to his 
own daughters, and thinking to soften the hearts of the 
wicked by the gentleness of the good, he gave to the 
wicked Lucius the sweet Tullia to wife, and the proud 
Tullia he married to the good-natured Aruns. 

But matters turned out differently from what Servius 
had expected. The wicked ones longed for each others' 
company, and they despised their amiable consorts as 
weak and mean-spirited. Therefore the bad Lucius 
murdered his wife and his brother, and he took to wife 
the daughter of Servius who had a like disposition to his 
own. So the two evil ones were married and excited 
one another to new enormities, for they desired to 
possess power, and by practising deceit and cunning 



ch. in. Legends of the Kings. 55 

they made for themselves a party among the nobles and 
those of the people who were the enemies of Servius on 
account of his new laws. 

Now when everything was prepared, Lucius Tarquin- 
ius entered the market-place, clothed in the royal robes, 
and, surrounded by a band of armed men, summoned 
the senators to appear before him, and harangued them 
as king. At the report of this usurpation, Servius was 
alarmed and hurried to the spot, and there arose a 
quarrel in the senate-house between him and his son-in- 
law. Then Tarquinius seized the old man, and cast him 
down the steps of the senate-house, and sent after him 
men who overtook him on his way to his own house, 
and slew him in the street. But the wicked Tullia, the 
daughter of Servius, full of joy at what had happened, 
hurried to the market-place in her carriage, and wel- 
comed her husband as king. And as she was returning 
through the street where her father lay dead, she ordered 
the driver not to turn the horses aside, but to drive on 
over the corpse of her father, so that the carriage and 
her dress were spattered with his blood. 

Thus Tarquinius gained the royal power without the 
consent of the senate, and without the choice of the 
people ; and as he had acquired it so he ex- 
ercised it, so that the people called him the q Sius, the 
Haughty, and hated him as long as he seventh king. 
lived. For he regarded not the laws and ordinances 
of good king Servius, nor did he summon the senate for 
counsel, but reigned according to his own will, and 
oppressed the people, both high and low. Moreover, 
he surrounded himself with a body-guard, after the 
custom of the Greek tyrants ; and those among the 
citizens who were against him, or whose wealth pro- 
voked his avarice, he punished, upon false accusation, 



56 Early Ro?ne. ch. hi. 

either inflicting heavy fines, or driving them into exile, 
or putting them to death ; but the poor he compelled to 
work at his buildings, and made them serve like slaves 
beyond their strength, so that many killed themselves 
out of despair. 

After Tarquinius had established his power in Rome, 

he turned against the Latins ; and on those who would 

not willingly submit he waged war, and 

Gabii Uestof made them sub J ect t0 himself. But the 
people of Gabii resisted manfully, and he 
could not prevail against them. Then his son Sextus 
devised this stratagem. He went to Gabii, as if he were 
flying from his father, and showed his back covered 
with bloody stripes, and begged the people of Gabii, 
with supplications and tears, to protect him from his 
father, and to receive him into their town. Thus the 
people of Gabii were deceived, and they trusted his 
words, and befriended him, and made him the com- 
mander of a company of soldiers. But the Romans 
fled when Sextus led the men of Gabii, for this had been 
agreed upon between Sextus and his father. So when 
Sextus had thus gained the confidence of the Gabine 
people and had been entrusted with the chief command, 
he sent a messenger to his father to know what he 
should do. The king was walking in his pleasure- 
grounds when the messenger came, and, instead of 
giving him an answer in words, he struck off with his 
stick the tallest poppies and sent the man back. Sextus 
understood the meaning of his father's reply, and began 
to bring false charges against the first and noblest of 
the men of Gabii, and so caused them to be put to death ; 
and when he had done this, he surrendered the helpless 
town to his father. 

Now in order to strengthen his power, Tarquinius 






ch. in. Legends of the Kings. 57 

united himself to Octavius Mamilius, who reigned in 
Tusculum, and gave him his daughter to Establish . 
wife ; and he established the festival of the ment of 
Latin games, which were solemnized every po^r'over 
year, on the Alban hill at the temple of Latium - 
Jupiter Latiaris, for all the Latin cities. After this he 
waged war on the Volscians, a powerful people who 
lived in the south of Latium, and conquered Suessa 
Pometia, their greatest and richest town. With the 
spoils thus obtained he finished the temple of Jupiter on 
the Capitol, which his father had begun, and the great 
sewers, and the Forum or market-place. He also 
adorned the town with many other buildings, for he 
loved pomp and splendour, and he thought by his great 
extravagance and by compulsory labour to make the 
people poor and helpless, that he might govern them 
more easily. 

Now, when he was in full possession of power there 
appeared one day before him a strange woman, who 
offered for sale nine books of divine prophe- „ , 

x x Purchase of 

cies, which the inspired Sibyl of Cumae had the Sibylline 
written on loose leaves. But, because she 
asked a high price, Tarquinius laughed at her and let 
her go. Then the woman burnt three of the books be- 
fore his eyes, and returned and offered to sell the other 
six for the same price which she had at first asked for 
the nine. But Tarquinius laughed at her still more, and 
thought she was mad. Then she burnt three more of 
the books, and offered the last three for the original price. 
Thereupon Tarquinius began to reflect seriously, and he 
felt persuaded that the woman was sent to him by the 
gods and he bought the books In this manner the king 
obtained the Sibylline prophecies, and he carefully pre- 
served them and appointed two men who knew the Ian- 



58 Early Rome. ch. hi. 

guage of the Greeks, in which the books were written, 
to take charge of them, and to consult them in time of 
great danger, or dearth or pestilence, to the end that the 
will of the gods might be known, and that their wrath 
might be averted from the people. 

Up to this time Tarquinius had been always fortunate 
in his undertakings, and he became ever more and more 
haughty and cruel. But when he had grown 
DeiphP l ° olc * k e was frightened by dreams and won- 
derful signs, and he determined to consult 
the oracle of the Greeks at Delphi. So he sent his two 
sons to Delphi, and with them Junius, his sister's son, 
who on account of his silliness was called Brutus. But 
the silliness of Brutus was only assumed to deceive the 
tyrant, who was an enemy of all wise men, because he 
feared them. Now when the king's sons brought costly 
presents to the Delphian god, Brutus gave only a simple 
staff. His cousins laughed at him, but they did not 
know that the staff was hollowed out and filled with gold. 
After they had executed the commission of their father, 
they asked the god to tell them who would reign in Rome 
after Tarquinius. And the answer of the oracle was, 
that he should reign who should first kiss his mother. 
Then the two brothers agreed to draw lots which of them 
should first kiss his mother on their return. But Brutus 
perceived the real meaning of the oracle, and when they 
had left the temple, he pretended to stumble, and fell 
down and kissed the ground, for the earth, he thought, 
was the common mother of all men. 

Now when Tarquinius had reigned twenty-four years, 
it came to pass that he besieged Ardea, the town of the 
Sextus' out- Rutuli, in Latium ; and one evening, when 
rage on fa e ki n g' s sons were supping with their cou- 

sin Tarquinius Collatinus, who lived in Col- 



ch. in. Legends of the Kings. 59 

latia, they talked of their wives, and each praised the 
virtue and thriftiness of his own wife. Thereupon they 
agreed to go and see which of the ladies deserved the 
highest praise. Without delay they mounted their horses 
and galloped quickly to Rome, and then to Collatia, to 
take the ladies by surprise. They found the daughters- 
in-law of the king enjoying themselves at a feast; but 
Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, they found sitting up 
late at night with her maids busy with household work. 
Therefore Lucretia was acknowledged to be the matron 
most worthy of praise. 

But Sextus Tarquinius, when he had seen Lucretia, 
conceived a base design and came again one evening 
alone to Collatia. Having been kindly received and led 
to his chamber, he rose in the middle of the night, when 
everyone was asleep in the house, and came into Lucre- 
tia's chamber and surprised her alone. And when she 
refused to yield herself to him, he threatened to slay her 
and to put a murdered slave to lie beside her, and then 
to tell her husband that he had found her in adultery. 
Then Lucretia resisted no longer ; and the next morn- 
ing Sextus went away and returned to the camp before 
Ardea. 

But Lucretia sent messengers to Rome and to Ardea 
to fetch her father Lucretius and her husband Collatinus. 
These two hastened to Collatia, and with them came 
Junius Brutus and the noble Publius Valerius Poplicola, 
and they found Lucretia in her room clothed in mourn- 
ing. When they were all collected together, Lucretia told 
them of the deed of Sextus, and of the shame brought 
upon her, and she made the men swear that they would 
avenge her. And when she had ended her words she 
drew a knife and plunged it into her heart and died. 

Then the men were overwhelmed with grief, and they 



60 Early Rome. ch. hi. 

carried her corpse to the market-place, and told the peo- 
ple what had happened and sent messengers with the 
news to the army before Ardea. But Brutus assembled 
the people together, and spoke to them, and called upon 

them to resist the tyrant. And the people 
the P king°an°d determined to expel King Tarquinius and 
of^re^uT his whole house, to abolish the regal power, 
lic - and to suffer no king any more in Rome. 

In the place of a king they chose two men who should 
rule for one year, and should be called not kings but 
consuls ; and for the management of the sacrifices which 
the king had to offer, they chose a priest, who should be 
called the king of sacrifices, but should have no power 
in the state, and should be subject to. the high pontiff. 
Otherwise they altered nothing in the laws and ordinan- 
ces of the state, but they let them all remain as they had 
been during the time of the kings. For the first consuls 
they chose Lucius Junius Brutus, and Lucius Tarquinius 
Collatinus. Then they shut the gates against Tarquinius, 
and the Roman army before Ardea abandoned the hated 
king and went back to Rome. Thus the death of Lucre- 
tia was avenged, and Rome became a free city after it had 
been subject to kings for two hundred and forty years. 

But the wicked Tarquin did not give up all hope of 
regaining his power. He had still a strong party in Rome 

especially among the younger patricians. 
Conspn-acy^ Therefore he sent messengers to Rome on 
ration of the t h e pj ea f asking the people to give up his 

movable property. But the messengers se- 
cretly consulted with his adherents how the king could 
be brought back to Rome. Now one day, when the 
conspirators were conferring privately together, they 
were overheard by a slave, who betrayed them to the 
consuls. Wherefore they were all seized and thrown into 



CH. in. Legends of the Kings. 61 

prison. But the slave was rewarded with freedom and 
the Roman citizenship. 

Then Brutus, who was consul with Tarquinius Colla- 
tinus, showed how a true Roman must love his country 
more than his own blood. For when it was 
found that his two sons were among: those J he P? L , triot - 

° ism of Brutus. 

who wished to bring Tarquin and his family- 
back to Rome, he condemned them to death as traitors, 
even as he condemned the other conspirators, and did 
not ask mercy for them of the people, but had the youths 
bound to the stake before his eyes, and gave orders to 
the lictor to scourge them and to cut off their heads with 
the axe. The people were now still more embittered 
against the banished Tarquins, and the senate declined 
to give up their goods, and divided them among the peo- 
ple. But the field between the town and the Tiber, which 
belonged to the Tarquins and was sown with corn, they 
consecrated to the god Mars, and called it the field of 
Mars, and the corn they caused to be cut and thrown 
into the Tiber. It drifted down the bed of the river to a 
shallow place, where it became fixed; and as, in the 
course of time, mud and earth collected there, an island 
was formed in the river, which was afterwards surrounded 
by embankments and walls, so that large buildings and 
temples could be erected on it. 

Now after the conspiracy had been discovered and 
punished, the senate and the people made a law that all 
who were of the Tarquinian race should be 

, . , , r , ,. , ,, Banishment of 

banished for ever; and all the secret adhe- the house of 
rents of the royal party left the town, and the Tarc i uinii - 
joined the expelled king. But Tarquinius Collatinus, 
who was consul with Brutus, was a friend of the people 
and an enemy of the tyrant and his house, on account 
of the shame which Sextus Tarquinius had brought upon 

F 



62 Early Rome. ch. ill. 

Lucretia his wife. But as he was of the race of the Tar- 
quins, he obeyed the law, laid down his office, and went 
into exile, and the people chose Publius Valerius to be 
consul in his place. 

Now when the plan of Tarquinius to regain his do- 
minion by cunning and fraud had been defeated, he 
went to the town of Tarquinii in the land 

War with ,.,.,, 

Tarquinii of the Etruscans, which was the home of 

his father, and he moved the people of 
Tarquinii and of Veii to make war upon Rome. Then 
the Romans marched out against the Etruscans, and 
fought with them near the wood Arsia. And in the 
battle Aruns, the son of Tarquinius, saw Brutus at the 
head of the Roman army, and thinking to revenge 
himself upon the enemy of his house, he put spurs to his 
horse, and ran against him with his spear. When Brutus 
saw him, he did the same, and each pierced the other 
through the body with his spear, so that both fell down 
dead from their horses. But the battle was fierce and 
bloody, and lasted until the evening without being de- 
cided. And in the night, when both armies were en- 
camped on the field of battle, the voice of the god Sil- 
vanus was heard coming out of the wood, saying that 
the Romans had conquered, for among the Etruscans 
one man more was slain than among the Romans. 
Then the Etruscans went away to their homes, and the 
Romans also marched home, taking the body of Brutus 
with them, and the Roman matrons mourned for him a 
whole year, because he had so bravely avenged the 
wrongs of Lucretia. 

Thereupon Tarquin the tyrant betook himself to Clu- 
War with sium, to King Porsenna, who ruled over all 

p °^, eni ? a the Etruscans, and he implored help of 

of Clusium.. L r 

him against the Romans. Then Porsenna 



CH. in. Legends of the Kings. 63 

collected a powerful army, and marched against Rome 
to restore Tarquin to his kingdom. And coming on sud- 
denly he took the hill Janiculus, which lies on the right 
side of the Tiber, opposite the Capitol, and drove the 
Romans down the hill toward the river. Then the 
Romans were seized with great fear, and did not venture 
to oppose the enemy, and to defend the entrance of the 
bridge, but they fled across the bridge back into the 
city. When Horatius, who was surnamed 
Codes, or the "one-eyed," saw this, he a>°les! US 

placed himself opposite to the enemy, at the 
entrance of the bridge, while two warriors who were called 
Laitius and Herminius, stayed by his side. These three 
men stirred not from the place, but fought alone with 
the whole army of the Etruscans, and held their post, 
while the Romans broke down the bridge behind them. 
And when only a few planks were left, Lartius and 
Herminius hurried back, but Horatius would not move 
until the whole was broken down, and fell into the 
river. Then he turned round and with his arms upon 
him just as he was, sprang into the Tiber and swam back 
unhurt. Thus Horatius saved Rome from the Etrus- 
cans, and the Romans rejoiced and led him in triumph 
into the city, and afterwards they erected a monument 
to him on the Comitium, and gave him as much land as 
he could plough in one day. 

Meanwhile, the town was hard pressed by Porsenna, 
and there arose a famine in Rome, and the people were 
driven to despair. Then Mucius, a noble 
Roman, determined to kill King Porsenna, sSelda. 

and he went into the Etruscan camp, even 
into the king's tent. But, as he did not know the king, he 
slew the treasurer, who sat near him, distributing the pay 
to the soldiers. And he was seized and threatened with 



64 Early Rome. cr. m. 

death. Then to show that he was not afraid of death 
he stretched out his right hand into the fire which was 
burning on an altar, and kept it in the flame without 
flinching, until it was burnt to ashes. But Porsenna, 
when he saw it, was amazed at the firmness of the youth 
and forgave him, and allowed him to return to his home. 
To show his gratitude for the magnanimity of Porsenna, 
Mucius revealed to him that three hundred Roman 
youths had sworn to attempt the same deed that he had 
undertaken, and that they would not rest until they had 
taken his life. 

When Porsenna heard this, he feared to distress the 
Romans any longer, and made peace with them. He 
took no land from them, except seven villages of the 
Veientines, which the Romans had conquered in former 
times ; and, having received hostages, he insisted no 
longer that they should receive Tarquin again as their 
king. 

Among the hostages was a noble virgin called Cloelia, 
who would not suffer herself to be kept captive among 
the Etruscans. Therefore when the night 
came, she slipped out of the camp, reached 
the river, and swam across to Rome. But the Romans, 
although they honoured her courage, blamed her con- 
duct, and brought her back to Porsenna, because she 
had acted in opposition to the treaty they had sworn. 
Then Porsenna admired the faith of the Romans, and 
released Cloelia and as many of the other hostages as 
she selected ; and when he went away from Rome, he 
left his camp there and gave to the Romans all the 
things contained in it. 

When Porsenna had become tired of the war, he went 
home to Clusium ; but he sent his son Aruns, with an 
army against Aricia, a chief town of the Latins, where 



CH. in. Legends of the Kings. 65 

the people of Latium were accustomed to _. „ 

r r The Etruscans 

meet for council. But Anstodemus, tne defeated at 
Greek tyrant of Cumae, helped the Latins, 
and the Etruscans were beaten in a great battle, so that 
few escaped alive. These the Romans received hospi- 
tably, nursing them and healing their wounds; and to 
those who wished to remain in Rome they gave dwell- 
ings in that part of the town which after them was called 
the Etruscan quarter. 

But Tarquin had not given up all hopes of regaining 
his kingdom. Therefore he went to Tusculum, to his 
son-in-law, Octavius Mamilius, and per- 
suaded the Tusculans and the other Latins 
to make war upon Rome. And the Romans trembled 
before the strength of the Latins, and not trusting in the 
divided command of the two consuls, they nominated a 
dictator, who should have power over Rome like a king, 
and to be sole leader of the army for six months. For 
this purpose they chose Marcus Valerius. After this 
a great battle was fought between the Romans and the 
Latins near the Lake Regillus, and the 
Romans began to give way when the ban- battle of Lake 

° J Regillus. 

ished king, at the head of a band of Roman 
exiles, came against them. Then the Roman dictator 
vowed a temple to Castor and Pollux if they would assist 
the Romans in battle. And suddenly two youths rode 
on white chargers at the head of the Roman horse and 
pressed down upon the enemy. And the Romans saw 
that they were the sacred twins, and taking courage 
they overthrew the Latins, and killed many of them. 
Now, when the battle was lost, Tarquin gave up all 
hope of regaining his kingdom, and he went to Cumae 
to the tyrant Aristodemus, and dwelt there till he died. 



66 Early Rome. ch. if. 

CHAPTER IV. 

EXAMINATION OF THE LEGENDS OF THE KINGS. 

From what has been said before, it is clear that the 
story of the Roman kings is not based even indirectly 
Absence of u P on contemporary records of any kind. 
contemporary The only claim which it can possibly make 

records. . , 

upon our acceptance is that some portions 
of it embody a faint national tradition preserved for 
many generations without the aid of writing. What 
these portions are we have no external criteria to indi- 
cate. We must therefore examine the substance of the 
traditions in the hope that we may succeed in extrica- 
ting a residuum of truth hidden under a vast superin- 
cumbent mass of fiction. 

The most easily accomplished task is the rejection of 
all that is absolutely fabulous. Herein the credulous 
. . , annalists themselves have preceded us. 
theory of Even they could not make up their minds 

to believe in the miraculous conception of 
the twins and in the equally miraculous suckling she- 
wolf. They tried to explain away these miracles in a 
rationalistic way, by suggesting that some lover of Rhea 
Silvia assumed the form of Mars, and that a woman be- 
longing to the disreputable class vulgarly known as she- 
wolves {lupae) acted as the nurse of the infant twins. 
This mode of explaining away miracles has lost all 
favour with modern critics. It is evident that the mira- 
cle in the story is not a casual, external ornament, 
which can be ca.st aside, but that it is the very germ and 
centre of the story, the most important and essential 
part of it, and that without it the narrative is nothing 
but an empty shell. 



ch. iv. Legends of the Kings 67 

It is therefore absolutely impossible to save the ola 
miracles of the birth and preservation of Romulus and 
his brother. In a like manner his ascension into heaven 
must be sacrificed, though that also was at one time 
sagaciously supposed to be the poetical version of a very 
plausible event, viz., his murder by his enemies during 
the sudden darkness of a thunder-storm. The fact that 
his body could not be found after the storm was easily 
accounted for. The senators, who murdered him, cut it 
up and carried the pieces away under their togas ! 

We need not rehearse the vain conceits with which the 
other miracles were turned into plausible history. They 
are all equally futile, and we have no alternative left but 
to draw our pen through the whole of them, though 
thereby we reduce the substance of the so-called history 
of the kings very considerably and deprive it of those 
parts which make it most lively and attractive. 

But not only the stories which offend against physical 
laws must be expunged; we must, in the interest of truth 
be equally merciless where the stories are incompatible 
with moral laws. For the world of human feelings and 
actions is governed by laws as constant as 
the laws of outward nature, though they are Moral im P°sa- 

& * bilities. 

more subtle in their working and less clear to 
our comprehension. The statement that during the forty- 
three years of Numa's reign, Rome enjoyed uninter- 
rupted peace cannot be looked upon as anything but a 
fiction or a dream. No waking and sober mind could im- 
agine that the turbulent Romans and their neighbours, 
who, in the time of Romulus which preceded, and in the 
time of Tullus Hostilius which followed, hardly sheathed 
their swords, would out of respect for a pious and 
peaceful king sit down quietly to work and pray for 
forty-three years. The peace of Numa's reign is a mira- 



68 Early Rome. ch. iv. 

cle not less startling than his intercourse with the nymph 
Egeria or his trick of intoxicating the god Faunus by 
pouring wine into the fountain of which he drank. 

Objections hardly less weighty than those just men- 
tioned have been raised against the truthfulness of the 
stories of the kings on the score of chro- 
Chronological no logy. The period assigned to the seven 

impossibilities. OJ x ° 

kings embraces two hundred and forty 
years, which is an average of thirty-four years for each 
king. Considering that four of the seven kings died by 
violence, and that one was expelled fifteen years before 
his death, it is not possible that such a period should be 
covered by the reigns of seven elective monarchs. The 
first to draw attention to this circumstance was Sir Isaac 
Newton, and now there is no difference of opinion on 
the point. It suffices to compare the average duration 
of the reigns of the doges of Venice, who were, like the 
Roman kings, elective princes. In five centuries (from 
805 to 131 1, A. D.) forty doges occcupied the ducal chair. 
This gives an average of twelve years and a half to 
each, or not much more than, one-third of the duration 
assigned to a Roman king. The Roman figures there- 
fore may safely be pronounced to be contrary to the 
laws of nature. Difficulties of a like kind arise when 
we scrutinize the data which refer to the lives and reigns 
of the two Tarquinii. The elder of them is said to have 
left his native town because it offered him no scope for 
his ambition. He must, therefore have been a man at 
least approaching middle age. He was then married, 
and removed with his wife Tanaquil to Rome. Here 
he lived sixteen years under Ancus Martius. His own 
reign lasted thirty-eight years. He was then murdered 
at the instigation of the sons of Ancus, who, by the bye, 
had waited patiently these thirty-eight years before they 



ch. iv. Legend* of the Kings. 69 

tried to recover their father's inheritance. Tarquinius 
must have been upwards of eighty years old when he 
died, and his wife more than seventy. Yet their chil- 
dren are represented as of tender age. If we assume 
that the eldest of them was ten years old on the death of 
his father, he had reached the age of fifty-four when he 
rose against Servius Tullius and hurled him down the 
steps of the senate-house, acting like a man in the first 
vigour of youth and heat of passion. But if the story, 
inconsistent with itself, represents the children of the 
elder Tarquin as sufficiently grown up at the beginning 
of the reign of Servius to enable the latter to marry 
them with his own children, the subsequent events 
become still more incredible. Tarquin the second must, 
then, have approached the venerable age of seventy when 
he rose against his father-in-law, must have been more 
than ninety when he besieged Ardea, and a hundred 
and eight or ten when he fought in the battle of Lake 
Regillus. 

These are reflections which do not disturb the poet or 
the narrator of legends. But the historian is bound to 
have an eye to the computation of years. Consequently 
the inherent improbabilities of the story roused the suspi- 
cion even of some ancient annalists, and Piso bethought 
himself of a means of remedying the fault. He inserted 
a whole generation between the elder and the younger 
Tarquin, and made the latter the grandson instead of 
the son of the former. This ingenious little trick of 
legerdemain met with the approbation of Dionysius. 
But Livy more honestly tells the story in the old unadul- 
terated form, leaving to his readers the task of recon- 
ciling it with the laws of nature. 

The objections which we have raised hitherto to the 
credibility of the ancient story are so obvious and palpa- 



70 Early Rome. ch. iv. 

ble that they have presented themselves 
Other objec- even to minds endowed with a very mode- 

tions. J 

rate amount of critical acumen, and in ages 
long preceding the birth of historical criticism. Yet 
there are other objections in reserve, perhaps less patent 
at the first glance, but not less destructive of our faith 
in the traditional story. 

The narrative proceeds on the assumption that the 

Roman people was formed by Romulus into a distinct 

national body out of heterogeneous and, as 

Omnipotent j t were atomic elements. The individuals 

lawgivers. 

who compose it flock together from different 
quarters, and are moulded into a political society by 
the will of an omnipotent lawgiver. They had no laws 
before. The organization of the state, the laws which 
regulate private and public life, were all the creation of 
Romulus. In like manner the first settlers had hardly 
a national religion. It was Numa who told them how to 
pray and worship, who appointed priests, sacrifices, and 
all that belongs to a public worship. The presumption 
upon which these accounts rest is altogether erroneous. 
The study of a great variety of nations has shown us 
that people who live together in any sort of community 
might just as well be supposed to be without a common 
language as without common political institutions and 
without religious notions and worship. None of these 

essential conditions for the existence of man 
retiefon as can ^ e sa ^ to have been at any time artifi- 
primeval as daily made for them by any prophet or 

lawgiver. The utmost that legislators can 
effect is to modify, to improve, to purify existing systems 
and institutions. To none of them, that we know of in 
history, was it given to find a void which he could fill 
with a theory of his own invention. Laws are not made, 



CH. iv. Legends of the Kings. 71 

but grow. Even now, in our time of restless and over- 
prolific parliamentary law-making, new laws mark only 
the endeavours of legislators to find the forms in which 
the general feeling of justice is to be expressed, or in 
which new wants, felt by the community, are to be satis- 
fied under public authority. 

If we approach the history of the kings with such 
convictions, we shall at once see that it cannot lay the 
least claim to authenticity. With the aid of two new 
sciences, comparative mythology and comparative philo- 
logy, we can trace back the religion and the social insti- 
tutions of Rome to an age which preceded the separa- 
tion of the Latin race from the Sabine ; nay, further 
back than that, to the period when the forefathers of 
Italians and Greeks, and of all the nations of the Aryan 
stock, dwelt together and were bound together by unity 
of language, religion, and social institutions. The 
received story breaks down in the very attempt to carry 
out the principle upon which it proceeds. It wishes to 
represent Numa as the founder of the Roman religion ; 
but it makes Romulus the son of a national god and of 
a priestess of Vesta, a goddess whose worship was as 
original and essential as the domestic hearth is for the 
establishment of a house. All the stories, therefore, 
referring to the origin of Roman institutions, which, 
whether religious, political, or social, are anterior to 
contemporary history or genuine tradition, must be 
looked upon as fabrications of a later age, as endeavours 
to divine the mysterious process by which law and reli- 
gion spring into existence. A great portion of the 
matter that fills up the early history is entirely made up 
of such endeavours. They take the form of 
myths, and have been properly called myths? 610 * 
" aetiological myths," i.e., myths account- 



72 Early Rome. ch. iv. 

ing for causes. Wherever an old ceremony, rite, or 
custom presented itself which seemed to be susceptible 
of an explanation, a story was invented which satisfied 
a credulous age as to its origin and meaning. 

To give an illustration of such aetiological myths, we 
will glance at the story of the rape of the Sabines. % 

It was a custom at Roman nuptials for the bride- 
groom to pretend to carry off the bride by force from 
her parents' home. A similar custom is 
3ie e sa a bme° f f° un( l m Greece, and no doubt prevailed 
very largely, if not universally, in antiquity, 
as traces of it can be discovered even now in many parts 
of Europe. To what extent this simulated violence was 
the remnant and reflex of real violence used in still 
earlier ages, we need not now inquire. It suffices to 
know that the custom existed. This custom seemed to 
require an historical explanation. How and when, 
people asked, did it originate? An answer was found 
in the story of the rape of the Sabines. It was said that 
the custom originated in the violence committed by 
Romulus, whereas the relation of cause and effect is the 
very reverse. The story originated in the custom, not 
the custom from the story, and this is, therefore, not a 
genuine tradition of a real event, but a fiction pure and 
simple or an aetiological myth. 

Such fictions were at first shame-faced and modest. 
At least they did not pretend to historical truth. There- 
fore the number of the Sabine women carried off by 
the Romans was stated to have been thirty, that is to 
say, as many as there were curies at Rome. In this 
form it was, on the very face of it, a fable intended to 
please and to amuse. But by-and-by such fables were 
worked up into historical statements. It was plain that 
the number of thirty was too small. What were thirty 



ch. iv. Legends of the Kings. 73 

women among so many men ? Consequently some in- 
genious annalists gravely asserted that the number of 
the Sabines, all counted, was exactly five hundred and 
twenty-seven. Who could now doubt the accuracy of 
the report ? It was evident that the number must have 
been taken from a memorandum entered by Romulus 
himself, or at least by the first Pontifex Maximus, in the 
public archives ! 

Not only laws and customs but also the names and 
the characteristics of localities supplied the materials for 
aetiological myths. In the Roman Forum 
there was a spot called Lacus Curtius, curtius CUS 
marked by a peculiar pavement or an enclo- 
sure. According to a statement preserved by Varro, 
this spot was struck by lightning in the year 445 B.C., 
and Curtius, one of the consuls of the year, enclosed it, 
by order of the senate. This is in all probability the true 
account. But it was either forgotten or it did not satisfy 
the popular fancy. Accordingly a more striking story 
was invented. Once upon a time the earth opened in 
the Forum and no efforts would avail to close it Then 
the soothsayers declared that the gods of death de- 
manded the life of the bravest citizen, whereupon Cur- 
tius mounted his charger and fully armed leaped down 
into the gulf, which instantly closed upon him. Hence 
the spot where the chasm had been was called the Cur- 
tian Lake. Here was an evident miracle. But some 
rational annalist who was above the faith in childish 
miracles wanted sober, sensible facts, which could be 
given out as historical. So he set to work and related 
how in the war between Romulus and Titus Tatius a 
certain Sabine horseman named Curtius, charging the 
Romans, plunged into and was with difficulty extricated 
from a swamp in the valley behind the two hills where 



74 Early Rome. ch. iv. 

afterwards the Forum was laid out. After this Sabine 
warrior the spot was named for ever afterwards the Lake 
of Curtius. 

It would be useless to enumerate and discuss all the 
aetiological myths of which the history of the kings is 
full. They all bear the same character, and are easily 
stripped of their deceitful historical mask and exhibited 
in their own fabulous hollowness. 

Some of the liveliest and most attractive portions of 
the early annals of Rome are stories of Greek origin 
smuggled in at a time when Greek slaves 
storie anc ^ P oets began to flatter their Roman pa- 

trons, either by trying to connect the early 
history of the two nations, or by adorning the dry and 
barren waste of the Roman annals with flowers culled in 
the luxurious gardens of their own imaginations. 

These Greek stories are easily detected, not only 
from their intrinsic character, but because we can some 
times point out the very spot in the literature of Greece 
from which they were taken. The story of the Tarquinii 
especially is enlivened by such contributious from Greek 
fiction. The stratagem by which Sextus, the son of 
Tarquin, gained the confidence of the people of Gabii is 
copied from Herodotus, who relates it of Zopyrus and 
Darius. The dumb message sent by Tarquin to his son 
at Gabii, giving him to understand that he should cut off 
the heads of the foremost men, is identical with one 
which, according to the same author, was sent by 
Thrasybulus, the tyrant of Miletus, to his friend Perian- 
der of Corinth. The embassy to the Delphian oracle is 
another instance of Greek fiction mixed up with Roman 
annals ; for how should the Romans have consulted 
Greek oracles more than two hundred years before even 
the nam t of Rome was heard in Greece ? 



CH. iv. Legends of the Kings. 75 

But a legend far more intimately connected with the 
most essential part of Roman story than the 
anecdotes just referred to is, no doubt an f R muhis 
importation from Greece, viz., the legend of not of Roman 
the miraculous birth and preservation of 
Romulus and Remus. 

We have already had an opportunity of remarking 
that the deities of the Roman Pantheon were not in- 
vested like those of the Greeks with human forms and 
attributes. At least it may be affirmed that the faculty of 
personifying their gods was possessed by the Romans 
only in a rudimentary condition. They looked upon 
the gods as either male or female, it is true ; but there 
is no trace of a Roman theogony, of a Roman Olympus 
where the gods lived in the fashion of men, marrying 
and begetting children. All the myths, therefore, which 
tell of the loves of the gods in human form may be 
suspected of being borrowed from Greece. Hence the 
apparition of Mars, in full armour, to the affrighted 
vestal, and his becoming the father of Romulus and 
Remus, are features which betray the Greek origin of 
the legend. The wonderful preservation of the exposed 
children, especially the suckling by the she-wolf, are 
features clearly taken from similar myths, which appear 
to have been numerous in Greece and the East, and of 
which that of the infant Cyrus (afterwards king of 
Persia) is a type. From the same source sprung the 
story of the apotheosis of Romulus ; for though the 
Romans worshipped the spirits of the departed as divine 
beings, able to bless or to hurt the living, yet they were 
ignorant of the genuine hero-worship which filled the 
Greek cities with shrines and sepulchres of local deities 
supposed to be sprung from a mortal race. 

Whatsoever we may think of the origin of these myths, 



76 Early Rome. ch. iv. 

whether they are, as we suppose, imported from Greece 
or whether they grew on Italian soil, nobody will deny 
that they are myths, or pretend that they contain even a 
residuum of genuine historical traditions. 

We now come to another force which has been active 
in the formation of the legendary history of the Roman 
kings, and which is due to that poverty of 
o^R^man 5 imagination characteristic of the Roman 
imagination. people, to which we have already referred. 
Not endowed with a fancy fertile enough to invent 
stories sufficient to fill the period of two hundred and 
forty years, the Roman pontiffs, or whoever drew up the 
first systematic plan of the earliest history, multiplied 
events by varying the detail of the same original story, 
and relating the different versions successively. It is 
possible that before the first attempt at a systematic 
arrangement of the details which make up the history of 
the kings, these details were separately current as con- 
ceptions which different people had formed, independ- 
ently of one another, about the primeval period. The 
compilers thereupon made use of as much as suited their 
purpose, adjusting and fitting the materials so as to form 
a plausible story, consistent in itself and free from pal- 
pable contradictions. But their success was not great. 
As shown above, they could not even assign the proper 
place to the political and religious lawgiver. In their 
endeavour to attribute to each of the kings some peculiar 
policy which might fill his reign, they were driven to 
represent a whole generation of Romans as destitute of 
the fundamental religious institutions. Other defects in 
the story may easily be discovered. Those which refer 
to the chronology have been already pointed out; but 
^ _._. the repetition of the same facts under a 

Repetitions. > 

slight disguise of different names and cir- 



ch. iv. Legends of the Kings. 77 

cumstances is perhaps the most decisive proof of the 
flimsiness of that web which is so fair to look at, but 
which falls to pieces as soon as it is touched by the hand 
of criticism. 

We will give a few specimens. It cannot have es j 
caped the most careless reader that there is a great 
resemblance between Romulus and Tullus 
Hostilius. They are both warlike ; both R e muius° 
double the number of Roman citizens, the and Tullms : 
one by union with the Sabines, the other by the reduc- 
tion of Alba. The war with Alba, again, has its proto- 
type in the war with Titus Tatius. As Tullus Hostilius 
is opposed to Mettius Fufetius, so under Romulus 
Hostus Hostilius fights with Mettius Curtius; the two 
Hostilii and Mettii are so clearly identical that the addi- 
tion of second names, which is intended to disguise the 
identity, cannot deceive us. Besides, Tullus as well as 
Romulus has grown up among shepherds ; both join 
Mount Caelius to the city, both organize the Roman 
army, both introduce the insignia of regal power, the 
" sella curulis," or chair of state, the lictors, and the 
embroidered toga, both degenerate into tyrants, and 
finally both are removed from earth amidst thunder and 
lightning and are seen no more. 

The similarity thus apparent between Romulus and 
Tullus Hostilius has its counterpart in the stories of 
Numa and Ancus. The latter is evidently 
the shadow of the former. Both are essen- of , N " ma 

and Ancus : 

tially priests ; the former nominates a high 
pontiff, Numa Marcius, to whom he confides the sacred 
books. Evidently this Numa Marcius, who combines 
the names of the two kings, is a creature of the same 
fiction which represented the founder of the Roman 
worship as a sacerdotal king. As Numa's reign had 

G 



78 Early Rome. ch. iv. 

been emphatically peaceful, he could not be made to 
establish the religious ceremonies to be observed in 
declaring war. Consequently this task was given to 
Ancus, and a war with the Latins was ascribed to him, 
which helped to make the stories of the two kings look 
different. Nevertheless the original identity of Numa 
and Ancus is sufficiently apparent. Both are "bridge- 
makers." Numa is " pontifex " (as it was supposed, 
from pons, bridge, and facere, to make, although the 
word denoted properly the priestly leader of a proces- 
sion), and to Ancus is ascribed the construction of the 
wooden bridge over the Tiber. Finally, the two are the 
only kings who die a natural and peaceful death. 

The original identity of the first and second Tarquin 

need hardly be demonstrated. But there are sufficient 

indications to show that they were also 

of the two looked upon as the political and military 

larquins, . j 

Romulus lawgivers of Rome, in fact that they are 

identical with Romulus and Tullus. Servius 

Tullius combines in himself the character of the two 

classes of Roman kings, who alternate in the annalistic 
scheme of the primeval period. He is the 

of Servius author of social and peaceful order, and of 

Tulhus. r 

civil law like Numa, and he also introduces 
a military organization which makes him identical with 
Romulus. According to a casually preserved tradition, 
his birth was as miraculous as that of the founder of 
the city. His mother was a vestal virgin and his father 
a god, who appeared to her on the hearth, the domestic 
altar, of which she had the charge. By this birth he is 
really characterized as the founder of the city, for it ap- 
pears from other similar legends that Italian cities 
ascribed their origin as a rule to sons of Vestals and the 
gods of the hearth. 



ch. iv. Legends of the Kings. 79 

It is generally supposed that the latter portion of the 
legendary history of Rome has a more historical cha- 
racter than the earlier. Scholars who are m , 

The latter part 

prepared to give up Romulus and Numa as of the history 
fabulous beings, and who look upon Tullus fabulous"!! ^ 
and Ancus as prehistoric, would fain per- the first " 
suade themselves that the stories of Servius Tullius and 
the Tarquins contain a great deal of genuine historical 
truth. Unfortunately this is an assumption which upon 
examination appears to be unfounded. If, on the whole, 
the family history of the Tarquinian dynasty has not so 
mythical a character as that of the preceding kings, it is 
perhaps even more full of arbitrary fiction and untrust- 
worthy statements. We have referred already to the chro- 
nological absurdities which pervade it, and to the stories 
of foreign growth with which it is decked out. Nor is 
the supernatural element wanting. Not to speak of the 
miraculous birth of Servius, and the light which blazed 
round the head of the sleeping child, we see that the 
prophetic queen Tanaquil, the arrival in Rome of the 
weird Sibylla, and the stories of prodigies with which the 
narrative is interwoven, are not of a character to give us 
more confidence. So much for the bona-fide miracles. 
Let us see if the story shows more respect for the canons 
of historical probability than for physical laws. 

King Servius is represented as the author of the 
scheme which divided the people into five classes ac- 
cording to a property qualification, and into 194 centuries, 
as the subdivision of the classes. This is 
the celebrated constitution of centuries, the The mi . r acu- 

lous origin of 

groundwork of the centuriate comitia of the Servian 
the people which, constantly adapted to the 
changing condition of the times, lasted to the end of the 
republic. Now, we are asked to believe, on the strength 



80 Early Rome. ch. iv. 

of the fabulous story of the kings, that Servius, having 
drawn up this elaborate scheme, was prevented by his 
sudden death (though he is reported to have reigned 
forty-four years) from actually bringing it into operation, 
that it remained a dead letter during the whole reign of 
Tarquin the younger, and that upon his expulsion 
Brutus availed himself of this ready-made constitution 
to establish the republic upon it. Although the people 
had never yet been called upon to meet in the centuriate 
assemblies for electoral or legislative purposes, they fell 
in so readily with the political ideas of Servius, that 
forthwith centuriate comitia could be held, the monarchy 
abolished by a vote of the people thus assembled, and 
the new republican order started in all its completeness, 
with two annual and responsible consuls instead of a 
king for life, and with all the modifications of the old 
laws consequent upon the change. 

It need hardly be said that such a process is all but 
miraculous. History shows that constitutional changes 
which have any life in them and are destined to last are 
not concocted in the closet of a lawgiver, nor put into 
working order without much difficulty and opposition. 
The ease and facility with which Tarquinius 
Expulsion j s deposed at Rome, and the republic es- 

of larqui- r r 

nius equally tablished without bloodshed, resembles a 

miraculous. . , . .,. 

genuine revolution as much as a military 
review or sham fight resembles a genuine battle. How 
can we suppose that a powerful king like Tarquinius, 
without having suffered so far any check either at 
home or in foreign war, a king who is represented as ac- 
knowledged lord of Latium, and who after a time mar- 
shals all Latium against Rome, should be thus cast out of 
his kingdom, not in consequence of a long-prepared 
conspiracy, and a powerful and organized opposition, 



ch. iv. Legends of the Kings. 81 

but by a sudden and unexpected explosion of popular 
passion, caused by an outrage, committed not by the 
king himself, but by one of his sons ? And to enter into 
the detail of this alleged outrage, what can be more 
absurd than the dispute in the camp among the young 
princes concerning the domestic virtues of their wives, 
the night ride to Rome and Collatia, and all that follows ? 
How, for instance, can it be supposed that Sextus did 
not know his cousin's wife, until he saw her working 
late among her servants on this occasion ? Lucretia's 
death may be a good subject for the epic or dramatic 
poet, but in the pages of sober history it is an idle tale. 
The foreign history of this period is not a whit more 
plausible or credible. We will select two portions — the 
war with Porsenna and the Latin war — to _ 

Incredibility 

show that our doubts are fully justified. If of the foreign 
we succeed in this, it will hardly be neces- 
sary to subject the remainder of the story to a similar 
examination, for it will not be supposed likely that the 
earlier portions of the narrative deserve more credit than 
the later. 

The war with Porsenna is among those parts of early 
Roman history which first attracted and justified the 
scepticism of modern scholars. And, in _ 

* 1 he war of 

truth, the narrative in itself is so absurd Porsenna re- 
and contradictory, that even without any Subjugation 6 
external testimony we may safely pronounce of Rome - 
the events to be unreal. Porsenna is represented as a 
great king of Etruria, who undertakes a war for the pur- 
pose of restoring Tarquin to his throne. He drives the 
Romans into their city, lays siege to it, and compels the 
people by famine to sue for peace, and actually to give 
hostages. Nevertheless at the conclusion of peace no 
mention is made of the object for which the war was un- 



82 Early Rome. ch iv. 

dertaken. Tarquinius is not brought back to Rome. Por- 
senna disappears from the stage, proving in the end not 
an enemy but a benefactor of the Romans, restoring the 
hostages, leaving the Romans his camp for public use, 
and giving them back the land on the right bank of the 
Tiber of which he had intended to deprive them. 

So much of contradiction is contained in the narrative 
of Livy. But this narrative seems coloured in the in- 
terest of Roman vanity. Pliny has preserved a state- 
ment that Porsenna in the treaty of peace forbade 
the Romans to use iron for any other purpose than ag- 
riculture. This statement, so humiliating to Roman 
pride, would not have been made if the fact of the sub- 
jugation of Rome by an Etruscan king had not been 
incontestable. The supremacy of this Etruscan king 
was according to Dionysius formally acknowledged by 
the Romans, inasmuch as they sent him the insignia of 
royalty, a sceptre, a purple robe, and an ivory chair. 
It seems clear, therefore, that a war so successful could 
not have been a resultless episode of the struggle which 
the Romans had to make to maintain their independ- 
ence. The war of Porsenna, as it is described in the 
annals, if it be not a mere fiction, must belong to a dif- 
ferent period. 

As for the detail with which the account of the war is 
filled, it is, if not miraculous, at least a poetical orna- 
ment, admirably suited for such lays as Macaulay has 
given us of ancient Rome, but not for a Roman history. 
The stout Horatius "who kept the bridge so well in the 
brave days of old " is a hero like the Homeric Ajax 
fighting with a host of Trojans to defend the Grecian 
ships. He reminds us suspiciously of the other Horatius 
who fought as the champion of Rome in the time of king 
Tullus. The story of the undaunted Mucius Scaevola, 



ch. iv. Legends of the Kings. 8$ 

who burnt his right hand and thus became left-handed, 
is apparently nothing but an attempt to explain the ori- 
gin of the name of Scaevola, which means "left," and 
which was a surname of a branch of the Mucian house. 
Nor is it a very plausible fiction : the Etruscan king see- 
ing his soldiers receive their pay, the paymaster look- 
ing like the king, the Roman edging his way into the 
royal tent and after all striking the wrong man, the king 
lost in admiration of the stout-hearted Roman, and at 
the same time so terrified that he grants peace to the 
enemies whom he had conquered, - all these are fea- 
tures of a story too childish to be tolerated in history. 

The war of Porsenna must, therefore, be struck out of 
the annals which purpose to recount the establishment 
of the Republic. 

The Latin war which terminated with the battle of 
Lake Regillus is of a different character. It seems to be 
real and to have taken place about the time m T . 

r The Latin 

assigned to it; but its aim and object are war full of fic- 
entirely misstated and the detail is fictitious. 
We will endeavour to prove the first part of this asser- 
tion lower down, when we review the historical residuum 
of the fables and traditions of this period. Here we will 
only direct attention to the perversion of truth and to 
the arbitrary fiction apparent in the vulgar narrative. 

The description given of the battle of Lake Regillus is 
altogether poetical, and seems almost copied from Ho- 
mer. The leaders engage in single combat and perform 
feats of personal prowess. It is essentially a cavalry en- 
gagement. The infantry, in which we know that the 
strength of the Roman armies always consisted, goes for 
nothing. Victory is decided in the end by the charge of 
the Roman knights headed by the divine twins Castor 
and Pollux. This feature shows that the poetic colour- 



84 Early Rome. ch. v. 

ing of the story is Greek ; for the identical legend, of 
aid given by Castor and Pollux in battle, occurs in the 
annals of the Greek city of Locri in southern Italy. 

The time when the battle of Lake Regillus was fought 
is variously stated by various authors. It seems strange 
that, if the battle was so decisive as is generally assumed, 
its date should be uncertain. But we may entertain grave 
doubts about its decisiveness, when we find that the La- 
tins, who are reported to have been utterly crushed in it, 
concluded a league with Rome soon afterwards on a 
footing of equality. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE FIVE PHASES OF THE HISTORY OF ROME IN THE 
REGAL PERIOD. 

We have now examined the salient features of the his- 
tory of the kings, and have come to the conclusion that 
it is no history at all. Shall we rest here, satisfied with 
this negative result? Shall we cut off all that precedes 
the establishment of the republic as mere idle play of 
the imagination, or is it possible to save something out 
of the wreck, and to substitute a few great outlines for 
the elaborate drawing with all the fanciful detail? Can 
we suppose that, after all, the memory of soma events 
of the earliest period did remain in the popular mind 
with sufficient distinctness to supply the earliest annalists 
with an historical substratum for their narrative, or are 
there, perhaps, in the institutions of the republic certain 
features from which we may infer what sort of institutions 
preceded them ? We think we may safely proceed upon 
the former as well as upon the latter hypothesis, and as- 



CH. v. Five Phases of Regal Period. 85 

sert that by disclaiming the intention of giving a conse- 
cutive narrative, by passing over most of the names and 
dates with which we have been teased so long, we shall 
be able to draw a picture— necessarily imperfect, but his 
torically true— of the political condition of the Roman 
people in the earliest period, and of the national and 
political revolutions through which it passed. 

There is every reason for believing that long before 
Rome became powerful, the whole of Latium was filled 
with a number of independent city-corn mu- Mostancient 
nities. In fact, this is the assumption upon state of La- 
which the Roman tradition itself proceeds. 
It is quite credible also, that these Latin cities had esta- 
blished a sort of confederacy, and that at the head of this 
confederacy was Alba Longa. In historical 

«_ _ , . . -, , , A confederacy 

times Alba Longa lay in ruins. Nevertheless under Alba as 
the people of Latium annually assembled head> 
near its site, where the temple of Jupiter Latiaris had 
been left standing, and there they celebrated the Latin 
games {ferice Latinee) and offered a joint sacrifice to 
Jupiter as a sign and memorial of their being all mem- 
bers of a national confederation. Rome had then the 
presidency at these meetings, occupying the place which 
originally no doubt belonged to Alba Longa. It is not 
likely that such a custom would have been introduced 
after the fall of Alba, whereas we can easily understand 
that if established at the time of Alban preponderance, 
it was continued in the same spot ever after in that spirit 
of conservatism which is natural to all religions, but was 
especially characteristic of the religion of Rome. 

We may suppose that, in this period of the power of 
Alba, the hills of Rome were occupied by 
Latin settlers, like all the sites in Latium, segment 3 " 
which were capable of being easily con- 



86 Early Rome. ch. v. 

verted into strongholds. The Romans of that period, 
therefore, were Latins, and the Roman language has re- 
tained for ever after the name of Latin, testifying there- 
by the original identity of race. 

This, then, is the first phase of Roman history. 

The second stage begins with the invasion of Latium 
bv a kindred race, the Sabines. That such 

Invasion of J . ' , . .. . 

Latium by an invasion took place at an early period is 
Sabmes. certain, even if the story of Titus Tatius and 

the people of Cures, coming down the valley of the 
Tiber, conquering the Capitoline and the Quirinal hills, 
and settling in Rome, were not related in the annals, 
and did not bear the aspect of a genuine tradition. For 
among the oldest and most permanent institutions of 
Rome, among their religious rites and their deities, there 
are some which are admitted on all sides to be of Sabine 
origin. It is therefore highly probable that Sabines set- 
tled on some of the hills of Rome, as the annals relate, 
and also that at the same time other Latin cities passed 
into the hands of the same invaders, for it is not likely 
that the hills of Rome were the only attraction (as the 
story of the rape would make us believe), and we do 
find that actually some of the cities of Latium between 
the Tiber and the Anio were Sabine in population. Per- 
haps it was in the course of this Sabine invasion that 
Alba Longa, the head of Latium, was taken and de- 
stroyed. 

This is the second phase of the history of Rome. 

The annalists have preserved traditions of hostilities 
between the original Latin settlers on the Palatine and 
the invaders who held the Capitol and the Quirinal. 
such hostilities might safely be assumed to have taken 
place even if no tradition had preserved the memory of 
them. As we have seen above (p. 6), nothing is more 



ch. v. Five Phases of Regal Period. 87 

likely than that the independent communities, living in 
such proximity to one another, found it more advantage- 
ous to come to terms and to live in peace and friend- 
ship, than to harass each other in daily strife. Accor- 
dingly, they agreed to a kind of international ._. 

. Alliance of 

alliance, in doing so they followed the ex- Romans and 
ample of the Latin cities, and, as far as we 
can see, the custom of all the Italian races, who seem 
everywhere to have formed confederacies where circum- 
stances favoured or necessitated them. 

This is the third phase of the history of Rome. 

The alliance of Romans and Sabines was the condi- 
tion of the future greatness of Rome ; for the strength of 
the several communities, instead of being worn out by 
internal strife, was now combined and soon gave Rome 
a preponderance over the smaller Latin towns. But the 
proximity to each other of the members of the Roman 
confederacy was such, their intercourse so frequent, their 
interests so nearly identical, that a mere international 
alliance was soon found an insufficient bond of union, 
and thus it was developed into some sort of 
closer political union, or a federal state. Alliance 

r developed 

This step is indicated in the tradition of the into a fede. 
annalists, when they say that the senate was 
raised from one hundred to two hundred members, that 
the number of the citizens was doubled, and that the 
two kings, Romulus and Tatius, agreed to reign in com- 
mon. The Roman state had now outgrown the political 
organization at which the leagues of the Latins, and of 
the other Italian peoples, stopped. All the other leagues 
were international, leaving each member free to support 
or to oppose the policy of the majority. The Romans, 
starting from the same point, advanced further, and 
bound up the free will and independence of the mem- 



88 Early Rome. ch. v. 

bers in the national will, declared by the decisions of a 
common senate and a popular assembly. 

This was the fourth phase of the history of Rome. 

Rome had now become a feder.il state, consisting of a 
union of families, which formed curies and tribes. The 
head of this community was a king, elected for life, and 
combining the functions of high priest with those of 
judge and military chief. But of these three functions 
the first seems to have been by far the most prominent 
and important in the earliest period of the monarchy, as 
will appear more fully lower down. Religion is older 
than any other element in human society. Political in- 
stitutions and civil laws are modelled upon religious 
institutions and divine law, and are a secondary deve- 
lopment in the history of nations. Though in the con- 
ventional arrangement of the Roman kings, Romulus 
precedes Numa, the institutions of Numa must be older 
than those of Romulus ; in other words, the oldest kings 
of Rome were pre-eminently priests, and the oldest con- 
stitution was more akin to a federation of half-independ- 
ent families than to a fully developed state. 

How long this kind of priest kingship lasted we can- 
not tell. It was followed by a military monarchy, which 
_ abolished the old sacerdotal constitution, 

Ihe sacer- 
dotal king raised the military and civil power over 

by^miiil that of the priestly order, consolidated and 

tary king. strengthened the state, and thus intensified 

the preponderance of Rome over the other Latin cities. 

This is the fifth phase in the history of Rome. It 
appears in the traditional story as the reigns of the 
Tarquins and Servius Tullius, and it seems to coincide 
with the influence of Etruscan dominion over Latium. 

The nation of the Etruscans differed widely from the 
Latins and their kinsmen the Sabines. They spoke a 



CH.v. Five Phases of Regal Period. 89 

language not understood by their neigh- 
bours. They were far advanced in civiliza- The Etrus- 
tion, in architecture and the other arts, in 
trade, navigation, and manufactures, when the Ro- 
mans were still half barbarians. Their settlements 
stretched at one time from the Alps to Campania. 
Latium lay between Campania and Etruria proper; it 
was therefore the country through which the Etruscans 
had to pass, if they proceeded southwards by land. Nor 
are traces of Etruscan dominion wanting in Latium. The 
city of Tusculum betrays by its very name Etruscan 
a Tuscan, i. e. an Etruscan, origin ; the town dominion in 
of Fidenae, close to Rome, is admitted to lum " 

have been Etruscan ; Mezentius, an old Etruscan king, 
is said to have ruled in Latium ; and the story of Por- 
senna relates the victory of an Etruscan king over the 
Romans. Finally, what is perhaps the most significant 
hint, the insignia of the Roman kings (p. 47) were those 
of the kings of Etruria. If, in addition to all these indi- 
cations, we find that some of the Roman kings were 
supposed to have come from Etruria, we have no diffi- 
culty in arriving at the conclusion that these kings were 
Etruscan conquerors. 

In accordance with this view we find that the Roman 
tradition ascribes to the elder Tarquin changes in the 
old institutions of Rome, in which he had to „ . 

Reforms of 

face the opposition of the native priesthood. Tarquin 
In the new organization of the army, Tar- 
quinius Priscus is obliged to yield so far to the objections 
of Attus Navius, the augur, that he adapts his reforms 
to the old names and divisions. In removing some old 
Sabine sanctuaries from a site where he wishes to build 
the great temple of the Etruscan trinity of gods, Jupiter, 
Juno, and Minerva, he is obliged to respect the shrines 



90 Early Rome. ch. v. 

of Juventas and Terminus. It is but a link in this chain, 
that the second king in this line, Servius, gives a secular 
and military character to the Roman institutions by de- 
vising the centuriate assembly, an organization on the 
basis of property qualifications for the purpose of go- 
vernment and war. This organization effectually did 
away with the old religious curiatic assemblies, from 
which all political power was now taken. If we are 
justified in supposing that simultaneously the old sacer- 
dotal king, the Rex, was stripped of his influence, and 
that the chief priesthood was conferred on the pontiffs, 
we shall understand in its totality the great change 
which raised Rome, from an aristocratic confederacy 
under a sacerdotal head, to a military monarchy, in 
which the priesthood was subordinate to the state and in 
which law and policy were no longer ecclesiastical but 
secular. 

The old aristocracy appears to have been dissatisfied, 

because the military kings curtailed their influence. The 

power of the senate was abridged; but the common 

people were well disposed towards the kings, who were 

their natural protectors. In the relation of 

Effect of -^ t • i i 

the military Rome to Latium a change seems to have 

monarchy. taken place> j f hitherto * Rome had been 

only a member of the Latin confederacy, she now became 
its head. Nay, the preponderance of Rome under the 
Etruscan kings seems to have assumed the form of 
actual dominion. How long this period lasted we have 
no means of judging. It seems, however, not to have 
continued long enough to change the national character 
or to affect the language of the Romans and the Latins. 

At last a reaction took place. Political op- 
ton. rCV ° lu " position seems to have been backed by 

national animosity. The Etruscan kings 



ch. v. Five Phases of Regal Period. 9* 

were expelled. The Romans and the Latins regained 
their independence at the same time. A partial but not 
a total restoration then took place. The old federal and 
sacerdotal institutions were not revived. 
The title of sacerdotal king [Rex sacrificulus e repu 
or Rex sacrorum) was allowed to continue ; but the 
office remained stripped of all political influence and 
limited to some insignificant religious formalities. The 
old comitia of curies were also preserved, but they no 
longer possessed any power in the state. The sove- 
reignty of the people was lodged in the centuriate comi- 
tia, and the executive power in magistrates who were 
not chosen for life and consequently invested with 
irresponsible power, but whose tenure of office limited 
to the space of one year. To this limitation was added 
another. Two men were elected to fill the chief office as 
colleagues, so that each might be a check on the other, 
if he acted unlawfully. Otherwise the prerogatives of 
the Royal office, as exercised by the late kings, were not 
curtailed. 

Thus the period of the military monarchy, though it 
was not destined to last for ever, and though it did not 
last perhaps for many generations, was the means of 
developing out of the old sacerdotal institutions under a 
priest-king that military organization which was equal to 
the task of making Rome the mistress of Italy and of 
the world. 

With the republic began the sixth phase in the history 
of Rome. 



$?, Early Rome. ch. vi. 

CHAPTER VI. 

RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN THE TIME OF THE KINGS. 

Giving up all details of the traditional history of the 
king-s, we have tried to discover through the haze of fic- 
tion a few prominent land-marks, by which we have 
traced the probable course of events from the time when 
the first settlers arrived on the seven hills of Rome to 
the establishment of a regular republican government 
under annually elected magistrates. We will now en- 
deavour to draw a picture of the public life of the Ro- 
man people in that primeval period, so that we may 
have a starting-point, from which to measure the ad- 
vance made in the succeeding ages, and a background 
to relieve the life and action of historical times. 

How, it may be asked, shall we obtain the materials 

for this picture, as the history of the time to which the 

picture belongs is lost ? Shall we not fall into 

Materials for an error as great as that for which we blame 

a- sketch. ° 

the annalists ? Shall we not be obliged to 
draw upon our fancy alone ? And will not our picture be 
as worthless as the legends which we have condemned? 
Fortunately it is not so. The advance of historical 
science since the days of the Roman annalists has en- 
abled us to reproduce pictures of the society even of 
prehistoric ages, with almost as much objective truth as 

the geologist can reproduce the fauna and 
S e of P Greece" the flora of a ? es preceding the creation of 

man and the present conformation of the 
earth's surface. The heroic period of Greek national 
life, the age of the Trojan war, and of all that follows 
down to the Doric migration, is lost to history as much 



ch. vi. Religious Institutions. 93 

as the period of the Roman kings. Yet it is possible to 
form a full and accurate conception of life in this period, 
of the state of society, of government and religion, nay 
of domestic arrangements, and even of articles of dress 
and furniture. This we are enabled to do because the 
epic poetry of Greece, though it cannot be trusted as 
evidence to prove historical events, invests its ideal per- 
sonages with real properties, attributes, and qualities, 
abstracted from what actually came under the poet's ob- 
servation. If the author of the Odyssey tells of Nausicaa 
and her troop of maid-servants washing the family linen 
by the river outside the town, we shall infer not that 
there ever lived a real princess called Nausicaa, but that 
in the heroic times the daughters of kings were in the 
habit of superintending the family washing. 

This is well understood nowadays. But the case is 
somewhat different when we approach the prehistoric 
period of Rome. Here we have no epic poems, origi- 
nating in the age we wish to study, and therefore repre- 
senting the general state of society correctly. The Ro- 
mans, as we have had occasion to remark, had no na- 
tional epic poetry. Memory unaided by poetry may 
preserve striking events of national importance, but will 
it linger on habits and customs which have passed away ? 
We can hardly think this possible, and we must there- 
fore draw our information concerning the institutions of 
the regal period from other sources. 

Fortunately these are not altogether wanting. We 
have already referred to the conservative spirit of the 
Romans, which induced them to preserve 
the forms and outward observances of old spirit of the 6 
institutions long after those institutions were omans - 
practically abolished, and the forms had been empty 
and unmeaning. Wherever, therefore, we can discover 



94 Early Rome. ch. vi. 

such forms, we are justified in concluding that they had 
once possessed life and vigour, and from the totality 
of such isolated fragments we can reconstruct the out- 
lines of the old social and political life. 

We start with a fact which we have had occasion to 
refer to in a previous chapter (p. 71), viz., that religious 

ideas and institutions are the oldest inherit- 
tyofreni^i ance of a nation, and that they precede 
institutions. those which are secular and political. The 
earliest periods in the history of every nation may be 
called sacerdotal or religious. All human action was 
then inspired, directed, and judged from a religious 
point of view ; the laws were the laws of God ; the peo- 
ple was a community of worshippers ; the temple of the 
national deity was the centre of the state ; the priests, 
as the interpreters of the divine will, ruled and regulated 
society ; the national wealth and the national strength 
were devoted to uphold this system. 

The truth of this statement is borne out by what we 
know of the Oriental nations. The Egyptians, the Jews, 

the Hindoos based their political institutions 

Supremacy of ,.....,._,, . 

religion in the upon a religious foundation. The sacred 
books, which contained the religious laws, 
were at the same time the code which regulated social 
and political life. Obligations towards the national reli- 
gion, its creed and worship, were not distinguished from 
moral obligations, nor moral obligations from those of 
civil law. The whole life of those nations was bound up 
in subjection to one idea, the idea of religion. 

As long as the nations of antiquity preserved inde- 
pendent national existence, every religion was strictly 
„ ,. a national religion, every god a national 

Every reh- ° , ■> 

gion purely god, whose authority extended no further 
than the boundaries of the state. The god 



ch. vi. Religious Institutions, 95 

of one state could not claim worship from the citizens 
of another ; nay, he repudiated such worship as sacrile- 
gious and illegitimate. And in a citizen it would have 
been treason of the worst kind if he had paid homage 
to any other than the national gods. Purity of religion 
was a civic virtue ; devotion to the altars of the gods 
was essential to patriotism. Exclusion from the national 
worship was equivalent to political banishment. A man 
who had lost his altar had lost his home. 

This unity or oneness of state and religion impresses 
on all the ancient communities a more or less hierarchi- 
cal character, although the nations of the 
West, both Greeks and Italians, differed Hierarchical 

character of 

widely from those of the East, inasmuch civil com- 
as they never made themselves the slaves 
of a priestly caste and early emancipated the state from 
the bondage of laws which claimed to be divine and 
therefore unchangeable. 

Yet the. earliest period of the Roman people may 
emphatically be called religious or rather sacerdotal. 
The law was in the custody of the pontiffs. The punish- 
ment of offences consisted in an offering or 
payment made to the gods in the form of a jjjjj^^ 
fine or ransom (ftasna), or it was a solemn originally 
act of supplication addressed to the gods to 
appease their anger by the punishment {supfilicutm) 
of the offender. Civil claims were prosecuted by a sacra- 
mentum, i. e. by depositing a sum in the hands of priests, 
which the losing party forfeited to the gods. Every 
political association was placed under the control of a 
protecting deity; for every action, whether private or 
public, the consent of the deity had first to be obtained. 
The father of every family was a priest ; every house 
{gens) or association of families had its sanctuary ; so 



96 Early Rome. CH. vi. 

had the curia, or association of houses, every quarter of 
a town, every tribe, and finally the state itself. The 
temple of Vesta was the symbolic hearth of the whole 
nation in the old Sabino-Latin town. The temple of 
Jupiter erected by the Tarquins on the Capitol was the 
centre of the enlarged state ; the temple of Diana on the 
Aventine united the Romans and their allies, the Latins, 
as fellow-worshippers and fellow-citizens, as the old 
temple of Jupiter Latiaris on the Alban mount had 
anciently united all the members of the Latin con- 
federacy. 

The pervading influence of religion in the first forma- 
tion of society and political institutions is thus sufficiently 
clear, and it follows that to understand the true cha- 
racter and working of these institutions we must try to 
understand the nature of that religion. 

The religion of the Romans, though belonging to that 
class of polytheism which prevailed, as far as we can 
see, among all the branches of the Aryan 
ofthe egl0n race, differed widely not only from that of 
Romans. fae Asiatic nations, but also from that of the 

Greeks, their nearest neighbours. It agreed in so far as 
it was a worship of the powers of nature, both material 
and spiritual. The heavens, the sun and the moon, 
light, water, the earth, the powers presiding over gene- 
ration and destruction, health and sickness, the ruling 
passions of the human heart, the protectors of law and 
society, all were singled out from the all-pervading god- 
head, the life and spirit of the world, to receive separate 
and special worship from man. While other nations 
speculated with more or less perseverance on the nature 
and attributes of the divine beings, and laid down elabo- 
rate systems of the birth and genealogy of the gods, 
investing them with human forms and passions, the 



CH. VI. Religious Institutions. 97 

Romans never indulged in such speculations, but were 
satisfied to look upon their gods as spiritual beings, all- 
powerful to hurt or to benefit man ; they never worked 
out a philosophical system of religion ; in fact, they had 
no theology and no sacred books to base it on. Before 
they became directly or indirectly acquainted with the 
Greeks, they had at best only a rudimentary mythology, 
and consequently there are no myths of genuine Roman 
growth (page 75). It is related that in the beginning 
of the regal period there were no images of gods, but 
only symbols, such as a lance or a stone. The repre- 
sentations of the gods in human forms were introduced 
by the Etruscans, who had borrowed them from the Greeks 
of the Italian peninsula. Thus began a regu- . , . 

K. ,. . r t ^ -, Adoption of 

lar process of naturalization of the Greek the Greek 
deities ; the whole system of Greek theology, 
their myths and their sacred art, were bodily trans- 
planted to fill the void which the unimaginative and un- 
speculative character of the Romans, and in fact of all 
the Italians, had left in their religion. Zeus was identi- 
fied with Jupiter, Here with Juno, Athene with Minerva, 
Ares with Mars, although the original conceptions of 
their nature might have been very different. Some 
Greek and even some Asiatic deities were adopted into 
the family of the Roman national gods. In short — as 
far as the speculative and imaginative part of religion 
was concerned, that is, the theological system, or the 
articles of faith, if we might use this expression — the re- 
ligion of Rome became identified with that of Greece. 

But the case was different with respect to that part of 
religion which springs not from reflection and fancy, but 
from feeling. The relation between God and man, the 
sentiments with which the gods were approached, the 
duties which they exacted, the worship prescribed for their 



98 Early Rome. ch. vi. 

service, in short the Law, or the practical as distin- 
guished from the theoretical part, were peculiarly Ro- 
man, and remained so even when the whole host of the 
Greek Olympus had migrated to Rome. What the 
Romans understood by religion was confined to this 
second part, as by far the more important ; through it 
alone religion could exercise an influence on real life, 
private as well as public, and it is this which must there- 
fore engage our special attention. 

If the religion of the Greeks was more fully and richly 
developed than that of the Romans on the 

Minute . / 

religious side of speculation, the Romans on the other 

o servances. h an d cultivated the Law with more zeal 
r and earnestness. In fact, they almost resemble some 
Oriental nations, Aryan and Semitic, in the scrupulous 
minuteness into which they bent the most trifling trans- 
actions of life under the yoke of religious duties. It is 
true they were free from the minute regulations con- 
cerning eating which in the East were an important and 
characteristic part of religious Law. They did not know 
the difference between clean and unclean animals, nor 
were the eastern laws of fasting and manifold washings 
imposed upon them. All asceticism was unknown to 
them. But nevertheless the observances prescribed by 
their religion were so numerous and imperative that no 
transaction of any importance was free from them. 
Prayers, offerings, vows, religious ceremonies, minutely 
regulated for every emergency, were of vital impor- 
tance. The least oversight, the least neglect might 
draw down the anger of the gods. Even ignorance was 
no excuse, for the divine interpreters of the will of the 
gods were at hand to expound the law and to prescribe 
for every occasion the proper rite of worship. 

On the other hand, in return for faithful service, the 



CH. vi. Religious Institutions. 99 

devout Roman had a right to expect from his gods help, 
protection, and all the blessings of life. The gods had 
made a covenant with him, and they were bound to per- 
form their part of the mutual obligation, if he was scru- 
pulous in performing his own. In fact, the 

1 r .i Meaning 

word religion is of the same root as obli- f the word 
gation ; and whereas the latter is applied " rell s ion " 
to denote a covenant entered into between one citizen 
and another according to the rules of civil law, the word 
religion denotes that bondage or service which man owes 
to the gods on the understanding that he is entitled to an 
equivalent. But inasmuch as man is the weaker party 
in wisdom as well as in power, he must be most attentive 
to perform minutely his part of the agreement. Religion 
therefore turns out to be the fear lest the gods should 
punish men for neglect ; it is a constant anxiety about 
duties they have to perform, a scrupulousness which 
makes them watch their own actions and all external 
events, lest the anger of the gods should be roused, and 
it is often not to be distinguished from superstition. 
Such a religion would have struck paralyzing terror into 
the hearts of men, and would have rendered them igno- 
ble, crouching slaves, if a protection had not been found 
in the law itself to shield mortal man from the superior 
power of the gods. 

The religion of Rome was a fully and carefully elabo- 
rated legal system. It laid down minutely 
the duties of man, and the fines to be paid asVfegJd 
on every transgression. It regulated the system, 
intercourse between gods and men, and showed how 
the good-will and co-operation of the gods could be ob- 
tained by a certain and infallible process. It was, like 
the civil law, full of fictions and casuistry. It imposed 
no obligations but those which could be accurately cir- 



L.ofC. 



ioo Early Rome. ch. vi. 

cumscribed by the number and quality of sacrifices and 
services. It suggested no such thing as love or trust or 
hope. The notion of virtue in our sense of the word 
was unknown. Cicero defines piety as "justice towards 
the gods," and he adds the significant words, " What 
piety is due to those from whom we have received no 
benefit ? " It is clear that the human conscience played 
a very insubordinate part in such a religion. Morality 
had nothing to do with it. Every iniquitous action was 
allowed by the state religion, provided a man could show 
that he was formally in the right. Even the gods might 
be cheated lawfully if a man was quick and sharp 
enough to avail himself of some formality in the divine 
law, or could interpret a doubtful injunction in his 
favour. An omen sent by the gods might be accepted 
or rejected, or interpreted in the most convenient and 
profitable way. A false and lying announcement by an 
augur had the efficacy of a true one, provided it was 
duly made in the prescribed form. Unlucky signs were 
not allowed to prevent any undertaking upon which a 
Roman magistrate was bent. It was only necessary to 
repeat the process of divination until the desired favour- 
able signs appeared. If the entrails of the first animal 
were found faulty, a second was slaughtered, and a third, 
and so forth, until heart and liver were found to be such 
as foretold success. If no favourable birds would ap- 
pear on the first inspection of the sky, the augur had 
only to continue his observations long enough, until he 
saw what he wished to see. 

The whole of this complicated system of divine law 
was in the keeping of the pontiffs. But 
and other neither the pontiffs nor the other priests con- 

priests, stituted an independent power in the state. 

They could declare what the law was, but they could 



ch. vi. Religious Institutions. 101 

not enforce it on their own authority. They were en- 
tirely subordinate to the civil magistrates, and their 
principal duty was to serve the state. A conflict between 
the state and the priesthood was impossible. Even if 
the national religion had not been so intimately bound 
up with and dependent upon the existence of the state, 
the priests could not have constituted a body distinct 
from the rest of the community, and bound together by 
interests of their own. They possessed none of the con- 
ditions of such independence. They did not, like the 
priests of India and Egypt, form a separate caste ; but 
they were elected for life from among the body of 
citizens, the high pontiff being himself generally a man 
of mark among the political leaders. Though not 
magistrates in the full sense of the word, they discharged 
public functions as necessary for the welfare of the state 
as any which were committed to the civil servants. 
Among these services none was more important than 
that of the augurs, who presided over the public auspices, 
the characteristic procedure by which the Roman 
people kept up their official intercourse with the gods. 
As a clear insight into the nature of the auspices is 
necessary for understanding the relative position of 
religion and the state, we must delay awhile to examine 
them. 

Every nation of antiquity had its peculiar method for 
ascertaining the will of the gods. The Greeks had their 
oracles and dreams, the Chaldeans consulted the stars, 
the nations of Italy looked upon striking and unusual 
natural phenomena as special revelations. Thunder 
and lightning, earthquakes, eclipses, me- . 

teoric appearances of unexplained character forms of 
or terrifying effect, abnormal or monstrous 
formations in men or animals, all this came under the 



102 Early Rome. ch. vi. 

head of "prodigies," awakened the "religion," that is 
the superstitious fear, of the people, and called for ex- 
planation on the part of the initiated priesthood ; or, in 
case of necessity, for expiatory sacrifices and services. 
But apart from these casual manifestations of the divine 
will, there were methods by which men might ascertain 
the will of the gods whenever occasion required it. This 
was regularly done before any act or enterprise of im- 
portance, whether in private life or in the matters of 
state. No election, no trial, no legislative vote could 
take place, no war could be undertaken, no battle com- 
menced, before the assent of the gods had been given. 
The gods allowed their worshippers to approach and to 
consult them at all times, and never refused a reply if 
the proper forms were employed. They sent their 
"auspices" to the magistrates of the Roman people 
through the interposition of the augurs, who understood 
the nature and the meaning of the prophetic signs. 

The auspices formed in some respect the very heart 
and centre of the practical religion of the Romans. 
They were the means by which every action 
of life was directed conformably with the 
divine will. Every private citizen could employ the 
augurs and consult the gods for his own guidance ; the 
magistrates alone could act on the part of the whole 
people and require the augurs to take public auspices. 
The augur on such occasions took his station in a 
templum, i. e. a consecrated plot of ground within certain 
defined limits ; he divided the sky above him with his 
augural staff (the lituus) into four quarters, and watched 
for the appearance of the sacred birds sent by Jupiter. 
As they appeared in one or the other of the divisions 
he had made, so they were pronounced favourable 
or unfavourable. No other answer was vouchsafed by 



ch. vi. Religious Institutions. 103 

the gods, but this simple yea or nay to the question, 
whether the enterprise in hand was acceptable to them 
or not. No direction of any kind, no indication of what 
should be done to secure the desired end, was ever given. 
All this was left to the free choice of men. If they 
failed to adopt the right means, it was their fault ; the 
gods did not guarantee success, but simply declared their 
approbation or disapprobation of the undertaking con- 
cerning which they were consulted. 

This system of taking the auspices prevailed in Rome 
as long as the ancient religion lasted, and was only over- 
thrown by the victory of Christianity. But 
it did not always continue to be animated ^ u b s us ^ e ° f the 
by that spirit of faith which had given it 
birth. In the republican period it became gradually a 
mere formality. The augurs announced as the will of 
the gods whatever they were expected to announce ; the 
gods were no longer allowed to put in their veto. The 
mode of taking the auspices was even adapted to the 
altered circumstances, and domestic fowls, kept in cages, 
were made to indicate, by their eagerness or slowness 
in eating, whether the gods approved or condemned an 
enterprise. But this indifference of later times must not 
mislead us with regard to the influence exercised at an 
early period by the auspices under the management of 
the priests. There can be no doubt that an unfavourable 
sign was in the old time a sufficient motive for abandon- 
ing any measure resolved upon by the civil power. Even 
the augurs themselves may be supposed to have been 
honest, and to have been frightened by unpropitious, or 
encouraged by favourable birds. They would be pre- 
vented by their own "religion" from announcing signs 
which they had not really seen. Such a priesthood, firm 
in its own faith, exercised no doubt an influence in the 



104 Early Rome. ch. vii. 

Genuine faith state w ^^ c ^ §" ave to the whole scheme of 
of the old government a hierarchical chaiacter. This 

was the character of the earliest period. 
Every institution of a religious nature was then in full 
vigour; the secular and military institutions were still in 
their infancy, and grew up under the shadow of the 
hierarchy. Law and civil policy received their impulse 
and first impression from religion, and only in proportion 
as the religious force of the national mind was spent and 
unable to send forth new offshoots, or even to keep life 
in the old roots, did the development of civil institutions 
take its own independent course. It is certain that after 
the establishment of the republic no new religious rites 
grew up spontaneously, whilst many of the old ones were 
preserved merely in outward form. We are therefore 
entitled to say that the early regal period was governed 
chiefly by sacerdotal influence, and that in it all those 
institutions were in full working efficiency with which we 
become acquainted only in the period of their decay, 
when they were more and more superseded by the poli- 
tical institutions of an age inclined to be sceptical and 
indifferent in religious matters. 



CHAPTER VII. 

CHARACTER OF THE MONARCHY. 

The chief magistrate of this age, the king {rex), was 
really the high priest of the nation (p. 88). He was 
elected for life, not for a term of years or an uncertain 
period. The man once chosen for the service of the gods 
was consecrated for ever, and this principle 
hi h n k riesr aS was a PP^ e d to the priests even after the esta- 
blishment of the republic, when the office 
of the civil magistrates was held for a definite period. 



ch. vii. Character of the Monarchy. 105 

The king was, after his election, formally inaugurated, 
i. e. the gods were consulted by the augurs whether they 
approved of him as their servant. This 
ceremony of inauguration was afterwards Inauguration 
preserved only for the pontiffs and other 
priests. The consuls did not require it. 

But probably it was not really by popular election that 
the king was appointed. We know that the priests even 
of the republican period were not elected 
by the suffrages of the people, but were election, 

nominated by other priests. We may there- 
fore infer that when the hierarchical principle was in full 
force, that is, in the regal period, the kings were nomina- 
ted by the between-kings (interreges), i.e. by those sena- 
tors who, according to a prescribed form, were selected 
from among the senators for the purpose of appointing 
a successor. 

The king, we are informed, did not judge in his own 
person, but nominated judges {duumviri perduellionis 
and qucestores parricidii) to try offenders. 
It is quite consistent with the sacred charac- Criminal 

x . judges ap- 

ter of a priest-king that he should not in pointed by- 
person exercise criminal jurisdiction. 

It is more difficult to decide the question whether the 
priest-king ever took the command of the army in war. 
According to the traditional story Numa 

_ ... , • , r 1 Military 

Pompihus, who is the type of a sacerdotal com. 

king, enjoyed perpetual peace. Perhaps zanders. 

the first compilers of the tales of the kings intended 
thereby to express the idea that it did not agree with the 
sacred character of the king to take the field. But 
if the sacerdotal king was disqualified from military 
command, it follows that in case of war he had to 
find a substitute. The question now arises whether 



106 Early Rome. ch. vii, 

there is any trace of magistrates who might have served 
as commanders of the army in the earliest period of 
Roman history. 

In historical times we often hear of the appointment 
of Dictators in times of extraordinary dangers. We are 
told that they were anciently called Masters of the peo- 
ple {Magistri populi), and we also hear of the office of 
Chief Praetor [prcetor maximus), which appears to have 
been identical with that of master of the people. The 
custom of appointing masters of the people or chief prae- 
tors certainly preceded the establishment of the repub- 
lic. It is not unlikely therefore that they were the offi- 
cers who in the time of the sacerdotal kings took com- 
mand of the army. The dictators were not elected by 
popular suffrage, like the other republican magistrates. 
They were nominated by one of the consuls, and after 
nomination they had to assemble the people and to 
obtain their promise of obedience. This process of ap- 
pointment appears to date from pre-republican times, and 
we may perhaps venture to say that a similar process 
was adopted on the appointment of the ancient masters 
of the people, that the sacerdotal king nominated them 
when occasion required, and that they obtained the for- 
mal sanction of the people by a resolution which 
pledged the people to acknowledge their authority. 

If this was the constitutional process in the regal 
, , period, we can easily imagine how it came 

Sacerdotal r ' / *> # 

kings to pass that the old sacerdotal king was 

by P maltary superseded by a military monarch (p. 88). 
chiefs. ^Y" e neec [ on iy suppose that a magister 

populi, favoured by circumstances, refused to lay down 
the power lodged in his hands. The temporary chief of 
the army would thus become a ruler for life, and the 
constitution of the state would be changed. But in all 



CH. vii. Character of the Monarchy. 107 

probability the revolution resulted not in a violent aboli- 
tion of all existing institutions. It was in some respects 
a development and consolidation of certain pre-existing 
elements, and it was a decided progress. It strengthened 
the internal unity of the state, abolished the remnants 
of the old federal system, toned down the undue promi- 
nence of the religious element and the predominance of 
the priests, and brought out the national strength by 
organizing a new popular assembly and a new army. It 
destroyed the exclusive privilege of a ruling class of 
noble houses, and thus laid the foundations upon which, 
with very few changes, the republic could be established. 
By the side of the old sacerdotal king there was evi- 
dently no room for another chief of the national religion. 
There could have been no high pontiff at the time when 
a priest-king like Numa presided over the institutions of 
the people. This inference is borne out by the legen- 
dary account. Numa is related to have appointed a 
pontifex of the name of Numa Marcius. 
This Numa Marcius is evidently no other appointed 
person than Numa Pompilius himself, for abolition of 
the addition of the second name is in this thesacerdo- 

, i-i r tal royalty. 

case, as in many others, nothing but a fee- 
ble attempt of the annalists to make two persons out 
of one. Moreover the identity of pontifex and king in 
the old time is sufficiently proved by the fact that the 
ancient palace of the king, the regia, was at the same 
time the official dwelling of the pontifex maximus. 

This identity of king and pontiff could only last as 
long as the king was essentially a priest and the head 
of the national religion. When a military chief usurped 
the supreme power the old sacerdotal king must have 
been stripped of his political authority. It was most 
probably by this revolution that the pontifical duties 



108 Early Rome. ch. viil 

were separated from the political and transferred to a 
purely sacerdotal officer, the pontifex. The military 
king could no more take upon himself the exercise of 
all the purely sacerdotal functions than in an earlier 
period the priest-king could have commanded the army. 
A new arrangement was made. The priests were made 
dependent on the magistrates, and religion became the 
handmaid of politics. 

Thus it was that the primeval policy of Rome, which 
was essentially religious or sacerdotal, passed over into a 
military monarchy. When at a later stage the monarchy 
was overthrown, the old institutions were not re-estab- 
lished, but the republican magistrates stepped into the 
place of the military kings, and religion lost more and 
more the influence which it had once possessed. The 
title and office of priest-king [rex sacroruni) was indeed 
preserved, for religious scruples forbade their formal 
abolition, but this " king of the sacrifices'' was debarred 
from all political influence. He was not allowed to hold 
any civil office, and even in his own peculiar depart- 
ment he was made subordinate to the chief pontiff. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SENATE OF THE REGAL PERIOD. 

If in the earliest constitution of Rome the king was 
rather the head of the national religion than a chief ex- 
ecutive officer, it follows that the community required 
some other central authority invested with political 
power, able to bind together the federative elements of 
which the state consisted, and to direct the government. 
This authority was lodged in the senate, a body of rnen 
consisting of all the most influential heads of families, 



ch. viii. The Senate of the Regal Period. 109 

and therefore appropriately called " fathers " 
(patres). They must have formed a kind d?f a « a therS 
of representative assembly, although the [f^s^of ?he 
idea of representation in the modern sense great 
was foreign to the whole ancient world. If 
it is reported that Romulus chose at first one hundred 
men to be senators, that this number was doubled on 
the union with the Sabines, and that under Tarquin one 
hundred more were added, we understand that the ear- 
liest annalists considered three hundred to have been 
the normal number of senators, and that this number 
was reached gradually. Now this number agreed with 
the division of the people in the prehistoric time, viz , 
the three tribes (Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres), divided 
into thirty curies, and (probably) three hundred gentes 
or houses. It would appear, therefore, that the ancient 
senate was intended to contain a member of each of the 
houses, and in so far these houses were in fact all " rep- 
resented" in the senate. 

If that was so, it seems that the individual members 
could hardly have been freely chosen by the king, as in 
republican times they were by the consuls, and after- 
wards by the censors. It would seem more natural that 
each house had a right to be represented in the senate 
by its head {pater), though probably the formal nomina- 
tion may have been the king's privilege or duty. 

As a consequence of this inherent right of the heads 
of houses to form the senate, it would naturally follow 
that the senate was not merely, as it was in republican 
times, a consultative body, but that it would share to a 
certain extent the executive government of the state. 
This we may moreover infer from certain formal rights 
which the republican senate retained, and which were 
probably only the remnants of rights more real and ex- 
1 



no Early Rome. ch. viii. 

_, , . tensive of older date. We know that the 

The authority . 

of the consent called "authority of the fathers 

{patrum auctoritas) was required for all 
elections and all legislative acts of the people. This 
right may be presumed to have been of much more im- 
portance in the earlier period. 

A second privilege of the senate in republican times 
was the right of deciding when a dictator should be 
named. It seems a safe conclusion that, in the time of 
the sacerdotal kings, it was in like manner the senate 
which determined when a magister populi should be 
elected to take the military command. 

But the most significant remnant of ancient preroga- 
tive possessed by the senators even in historical times 
was the right of acting as interreges (between-kings) i. e. 
of taking upon themselves the executive 
The inter- power in the interregnum, the interval be- 

regnum. * d 

tween the death of duly elected magistrates 
and the installation of their successors. Such an event 
would more rarely happen in the time of the republic, 
when two chief magistrates were annually appointed ; 
but it regularly occurred in the regal period on the death 
of a king. Then it was that the senate as a body stepped 
into the king's place, one senator after another acting 
as "interrex" for five days, until a new king was ap- 
pointed. At such times the right to take the auspices 
which had been possessed by the deceased king passed 
over to the body of the senators. These men stood for- 
ward now as the mediators between the Roman gods 
and the Roman people ; they took care that the link 
was not broken between the two, that the auspices could 
be duly taken, and that, with the consent of the gods, a 
new king should be appointed. 

The senate, therefore, occupied a most influential posi- 



ch. ix. The People in the Regal Period. i 1 1 

tion under the sacerdotal kings. When the revolution 
took place, which placed military kings at 

1 J r , , r n- Conflict 

the head of the state, we hear of conflicts between the 
between them and the senate. The younger thelater 1 
Tarquin is said to have expelled and even k mgs- 
murdered many senators, and to have in fact superseded 
the senate altogether. He was not nominated in due 
form by an interrex, and was therefore, according to the 
spirit of the ancient public law, a usurper not entitled to 
take the public auspices of the Roman people. When 
he was expelled, the power of the senate revived, and 
new senators were appointed in the place of those whom 
Tarquin had killed. In fact, a regular aristocratic resto- 
ration took place. The liberty gained by the downfall 
of the tyrant was not a liberty for the lower classes of 
citizens, but a liberty for the nobility, who exercised 
their power in a spirit so hostile to the people that the 
Tarquins were looked upon with tender regret. The 
people were soon driven to rise against their oppressors, 
and to force them to concessions by seceding in a body 
to the Sacred Hill, and threatening to separate them- 
selves from Rome. 

The secession to the Sacred Hill was the commence- 
ment of the growth of popular liberties. To understand 
it we must examine the condition of the people in the 
preceding period. 



CHAPTER IX. 
the; people in the regal period. 
The Roman people were not a homogeneous mass. 
Apart from actual slaves, who were never classed with 
the people in any ancient community, we observe two 
distinct classes of citizens, the patricians and the pie- 



ii2 Early Rome. ch. ix. 

beians, i. e. the ruling class of citizens in the 

The people. . 

Patricians and possession of the full franchise, and an m- 
plebeians. f cr i or dependent class. A similar distinction 

between two classes of citizens we find in every state of 
antiquity. It owes its origin to conquest and to the ne- 
cessity under which the conquerors found themselves of 
admitting the conquered races to some sort of civil fel- 
lowship. The rule was, that the inferior class were 
allowed to enjoy certain private rights of property and 
personal security. They were not slave? in the full sense 
of the word; for slaves never enjoyed the protection of 
the law for either property or life. But the conquered 
race was not admitted to civil equality with the conque- 
rors. They had to bear the civil burdens in return for 
the protection they enjoyed; they had especially to join 
their rulers in the defence of the common country ; but 
they were excluded from the political rights of the sove- 
reign people, i. <?., from a voice in the national assem- 
blies, whether for the election of magistrates, or for 
resolutions affecting the national policy, or for legisla- 
tion, or finally, for the trial of offenders. 

All these functions accordingly devolved in Rome 
exclusively on the patricians, i. e. the members of those 
families who had founded the state by conquest. They 
alone formed what was anciently called the " populus 
Romanus " in opposition to the plebs. This patrician 
_ . . populus was divided into tribes, curiae, and 

Patrician l r ,,,.., 

assembly of gentes. The assembly of curies \comitia cu- 
riata) was consequently an assembly of pa- 
tricians only ; at least, it seems clear that plebeians, if 
admitted to listen or to be present when the curies met, 
took no active part in their decisions. 

The comitia curiata were the only popular assemblies 
known in the earliest period, when the national institu- 



CH. ix. The People in the Regal Period. 113 

tions bore a pre-eminently religious character, and the 
original confederacy had not yet been fully developed 
into a real state with a centralized, secular government. 
The assembly voted by curies, that is, there were thirty 
votes, all the members of one curia uniting to form one 
vote. The king presided, and all questions of national im- 
portance were here decided, viz., the election (or perhaps 
only the inauguration) of kings, the investment of a 
commander with military power [the lex curiatia de 
imperid), declarations of war, the trial of offenders, and 
finally the adoption of laws, if formal legislation can be 
supposed to have taken place at that time. 

The constitution of Rome exhibits with regard to 
popular assemblies a feature not found anywhere else. 
It is this, that not less than three different 
forms of such assemblies existed side by different 5 * 
side differently organized and having each popular 
its own peculiar functions. The assembly 
of curies, of which we have just spoken, was the oldest 
and for a time the only assembly. In the second period 
of the kings was organized the military assembly of 
centuries, which was destined chiefly for the election of 
military commanders for decisions about peace and war 
and for the trial of those citizens who had broken the 
peace and were therefore looked upon as public ene- 
mies. The third form of assemblies, the comitia tributa, 
was introduced in consequence of the rising of the plebs. 
They included only plebeians, and were at first confined 
to the election of plebeian magistrates (the tribunes 
of the people and the plebeian aediles) and to ques- 
tions concerning the plebs alone. But in course of time 
this last assembly •acquired more and more importance, 
and was invested with the character of a national 
assembly. The peculiar organization of these three 



H4 Early Rome. ch. ix. 

assemblies constitutes the distinguishing feature of the 
three successive periods of the Roman constitution. We 
shall become acquainted with the centjuriate assembly 
when we come to review the republican government in 
its oldest form, and with the assemblies of tribes when 
we examine the rise and progress of the tribunician 
power. Of the curiatic assembly we need say no more 
than that as far as real life and influence are concerned 
it was a thing of the past when Rome emerged from the 
prehistoric period. It was then one of those unmeaning 
forms which the Romans preserved from their national 
veneration for old institutions, and which enable the 
historian to form an opinion of times otherwise buried 
in utter oblivion. 

The patricians, as we have seen, formed the ruling 
body. By the side of them there existed from the earliest 
times a subordinate class called plebeians, enjoying in- 
deed the name of Roman citizens and entitled to the 
protection of life and property, differing 
Rights of the therefore widely from slaves, but still ex- 

plebeians. ■* 

eluded from a share in the government, 
from the senate, the assembly of curies, the auspices of 
the State, and from intermarriage with the patricians. 
They thus formed a distinct body, a subject population 
bound to bear the burdens of the state without sharing 
in its government. They had no doubt a separate or- 
ganization to manage their own affairs, their peculiar 
sanctuaries, their assemblies, religious and social, their 
own officers for administrative and judicial purposes. 
But of these things we can only form conjectures, based 
upon the institutions of a later period, as no satisfactory 
evidence can be traced back to the period of the kings. 
Nor are we better informed of the origin of the plebe- 
ians. According to the traditional story, it was Romulus 



ch. ix. The People in the Regal Period. 115 

who by his own will and pleasure divided 
the ' whole mass of citizens into patricians O r 'g in of the 
and plebeians. This account is no more to 
be trusted than the stories of the legislation of Romulus 
and Nuraa. Dependent classes are not made by legisla- 
tors ; they are the result of political revolutions. The 
Roman plebeians must have been the descendants of a 
population reduced to subjection by conquest. But 
when and how this was done is beyond the reach of our 
knowledge. It is possible that the original population 
of the country was at one time conquered by an inva- 
ding host of new settlers and then reduced to the condi- 
tions of plebeians ; it is possible also that the invaders 
brought with them a class of dependents, the result of a 
previous conquest. We cannot speculate on these possi- 
bilities with any prospect of profit, and must rest satisfied 
with a general impression rendered plausible by analogy. 

A certain number of plebeians were distinguished 
from the rest by the name of clients. These clients ap- 
pear to have been attached as hereditary he „ 
dependents to certain patrician families. 
Each patrician had a number, of whom he was called 
the "patron." He was bound specially to watch over 
their interests, and to act as their legal protector, whilst 
in return they paid him fixed dues and services. 

The clients seem to have played an important part 
in the early period. They are often mentioned as the 
special partisans of the patricians in their disputes with 
the plebs. They would appear therefore to have been 
practically a distinct class of citizens, although the law 
knew only patricians and plebeians, and classed the 
clients among the latter. In course of time the difference 
between clients and other plebeians disappeared. The 
old clientship became a thing of the past, and was 



n6 Early Rome. ch. x. 

replaced by a new clientship of a somewhat different 
order, with which the early history of Rome has no 
concern. 

It is not at all unlikely that the condition of the 
plebeians was improved by the military kings, who 

limited the power of the more aristocratic 
kings m the ary form of government in which the heads of 
P h tr °i n b° f patrician houses, assembled in the senate, 

ruled the state under the nominal control of 
a sacerdotal king. The establishment of the comitia 
centuriata, which first gave political rights to the ple- 
beians, isascribed to Servius Tullius. The Tarquins,who 
are represented as hostile to the nobility, must have re- 
lied upon the support of the plebeians, and we are told 
that upon the expulsion of the kings the patricians were 
compelled to make concessions to the plebeians, in order 
to reconcile them to the republican government. We 
are told, moreover, that as soon as all danger of a resto- 
ration of the kings was past, the patricians showed them- 
selves less conciliatory to the plebeians, and that the 
latter were thus forced into an open rebellion, which 
threatened the state with dissolution, and was only 
brought to an end by fresh concessions on the part of 
the patricians. This rebellion is the famous secession 
to the Sacred Hill, the starting-point of plebeian liber- 
ties, to which we shall soon have to turn our attention. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE MAGISTRATES OF THE REPUBLIC. 

It would be a great mistake to look upon the republican 
institutions, established after the fall of the Tarquin 
monarchy, as an entirely new creation. We have al- 



CH. x. Magist?-ates of the Republic. 117 

ready had occasion to observe that such new creations 
are unknown in the history of the human race, and that 
all that appears to be new in constitutional reforms is in 
fact only a development of existing germs. This can be 
satisfactorily shown to have been the case at Rome, in 
this early period of its career, as it was at every subse- 
quent stage. 

The division of the people into patricians and ple- 
beians remained what it had been. The patrician 
assembly of curies retained its religious character ; the 
military and political assembly of centuries came into 
regular working order ; the Senate con- 

• 1 1 1 •-. ,- , • Change 

tinued to be the great council of the nation, in the 
but a change was made in the executive. 
In the place of a king for life two annual chief magis- 
trates were appointed under the name of "praetors," 
which name was afterwards changed into 
that of "consuls." To these annual magis- suiar°office. 
trates the power of the kingly office was 
transferred undiminished, as were also the insignia of 
the kings. The change seemed slight ; yet it was most 
important. For by the limitation of the 
office to a short period of time/ the Romans in time. 

secured the personal responsibility of their 
chief magistrates, which is the most essential part of re- 
publican government. v Durjng his term of office a 
magistrate could not have Been subject to a criminal 
prosecution and punishment without derogating from the 
majesty of the state, as represented by him, and without 
danger to the safety of the republic itself. But his term 
of office being over, the consul became a private citizen, 
and was amenable to the laws. This prospect of an im- 
pending settlement of accounts was calculated to keep 
an annual magistrate in the path of duty, whilst a king 



n8 Early Rome. ch. x. 

who retained power as long as he lived was free from 
such salutary considerations. 

The second modification in the office of chief magis- 
trate was its partition among; two colleagues, equal in 
ev^ry respect in rank and power. This measure, which 
necessarily impaired to some extent the unity and vigour 
of the executive, was adopted as a precau- 
^ngtwo™ tion against the abuse of authority. Not 
colleagues. satisfied with the limitation of the office to 
a short annual period, the Romans desired a guarantee 
for their liberty even during that period, and they 
expected to find it in the control which one consul 
might exercise over the other. Each of 
Right of in- them was entrusted consequently with the 

tercession. ^ J 

right of "intercession," z. e. he could place 
his veto on any official act of his colleague. Such a 
right might of course be abused to the great detriment 
of the public interest ; but coupled with the responsi- 
bility which awaited every consul after the expiration of 
his term of office, it proved on the whole so successful 
that the Romans adhered to it cheerfully through all the 
vicissitudes of their history, until the republican govern- 
ment passed into a monarchy. 

However, they were not blind to the weakness of the 
arrangement, which they had adopted out of jealousy 
for their liberties. Whenever it was found that the 
division of authority endangered the national independ- 
ence, in great emergencies of foreign or domestic con- 
flicts, they had recourse to a temporary restoration of 

undivided authority, by appointing a single 
The die- chief officer, called Dictator, to supersede 

tatorsnip. r 

the two consuls, and to unite in his own 
hands the whole executive power as it had been pos- 
sessed by the kings. 



CH. x. Magistrates of the Republic. 119 

A dictator was appointed after a decree of the senate, 
not by popular suffrage, but by one of the consuls, who, 
although nominally free in his choice, would naturally 
name the man pointed out by the general confidence as 
equal to the occasion. The consent of the people to his 
nomination was expressed by a solemn act of the as- 
sembly of curies (not the centuries), which being sum- 
moned by the dictator himself, conferred upon him (by 
the so-called lex curiata) the " Imperium," i. e. the chief 
and unlimited military command. The dictator then 
appointed an officer second in command, called "Mas- 
ter of the Horse" {?nagister equituni), to act under his 
orders. The consuls and all other magistrates were 
suspended during the time the dictator carried on the 
government, and they re-entered on their offices the 
moment he abdicated. This he did as soon as the 
emergency which had called for his nomination was 
over, the maximum term of his office being six 
months. 

Our authorities are not agreed as to the time when the 
dictatorship was first established, nor as to the name of 
the first man who filled the office. They agree in so far 
that it belongs to the first period of the re- . 

public. It is, in all likelihood, of still higher the dictator- 
antiquity ; in fact, those officers who led the s ip " 
legions of Rome in the earliest times, in the age of the 
sacerdotal kings, were probably dictators or the proto- 
types of dictators. We have already (p. no) pointed 
out the probability that the official names "master of the 
people" [niagister populi) and " first praetor" [fircefor 
waximus), which are reported to have been synony- 
mous with the title of dictator, were used to designate 
these chief officers in the pre-republican age. They 
were certainly not used afterwards, and as they were 



120 Early Rome. ch. x. 

titles of high antiquity, we are led to assume that they 
were applied to a constitutional office in the oldest 
period of Rome. 

If this conjecture prove correct, we see that the repub- 
lican practice was also in this respect far from being an 
entire novelty, and that the forms of the republican in- 
stitutions were partly a revival, partly a development of 
a former state of things. We may go further and say, 
that in all probability the duality of the chief office, i. e. 
the consular form of government, was probably not in- 
troduced immediately upon the expulsion of the kings, 
but that that event was followed in the first instance by 
the restoration of the dictatorship, which in its turn was 
modified to give place to the consular government. 

Such a course of events is made highly probable by 
the traditions which clung to the name of Valerius 
Poplicola. It is related that after the death 
Poplicola. °f Brutus, his colleague, in the first year of 

the republic (p. 62), he remained alone in 
office as sole consul, and omitted to call an assembly 
of the people for the election of a second consul. This 
proceeding, it is said, gave umbrage to the people, 
especially as Valerius began to build himself a house on 
the Velia, the very spot where the kings had resided. It 
was feared that he was about to imitate the example of 
Tarquin, and aspired to make himself sole and per- 
petual master. ^But Valerius put to shame 
The Vale- a jj f ear an( j a ]| SUS pi c ion. He proposed and 

nan laws. r x L 

passed a law in the centuriate assembly, by 
which it was declared high treason in a citizen to assume 
public authority which was not legally and freely con- 
ferred upon him by the people ; in other words, a law 
punishing by outlawry and confiscation any attempt to 
restore the monarchy. A second law of Valerius granted 



ch. x. Magistrates of the Republic. 121 

to every citizen the right of appeal from a penal sentence 
of the magistrates to the popular assembly. These two 
laws contained the formal abolition of the monarchy, 
and secured the acknowledgment of the sovereignty of 
the people. To mark this by an outward sign, Valerius 
ordered the axes to be removed from the fasces of his 
lictors, and thus appeared before the people without the 
dreaded instruments of death, which had been a signifi- 
cant part of the royal and dictatorial insignia. From 
this time forward the consuls did not show the axes 
within the precincts of the city. This symbol of power 
over life and death was reserved to the dictators, and in 
case of war to the consuls in the field. 

The tradition of the policy of Valerius deserves credit 
inasmuch as it was necessarily kept alive by the con- 
tinued enforcement of the Valerian laws, the charter of 
the republic. It points unmistakably to the fact that the 
annual election of two magistrates, which is the charac- 
teristic mark of the republic, was preceded by a period 
in which not two, but one man was at the head of the 
state, and that the time of office was not then strictly 
limited to one year. This dictatorship, again, was not a 
new invention, but the revival of the old, or perhaps, 
primeval office of an occasional " master of the people," 
which had degenerated in the time of the Tarquins into 
government for life. 

The duties of government in the states of antiquity 
were very simple, especially in states so small and so 
little advanced in civilization as Rome was ^ . 

. Duties of the 

in the earlier stages of her career. The consular 
principal duty devolving upon the consuls ° ce ' 
was the command of the army in those everlasting petty 
wars in which Rome, like every small and rude com- 
munity, was involved. To maintain the independence 



122 Early Rome. ch. x. 

of the state is the primary object of all national institu- 
tions, and the military organization was therefore the 
foundation for all civil order ; the army, as we shall see, 
was the model for the popular assembly. 

Internal peace, not less important than protection 

from abroad, was secured by the laws, and here again 

the duties of the Roman magistrates were 

Adimnistra- very simple. For the settlement of private 

tion of justice. J c f 

disputes and claims, private arbitrators 
agreed upon by the parties acted under the authority and 
sanction of the magistrates. Criminal jurisdiction alone 
was in the hands of the magistrates ; but the consuls 
could (like the kings) appoint judges (quaestors) for the 
trial of offenders. An appeal lay from the decision of 
the magistrate to the popular assembly, which was thus 
constituted the highest court of law in criminal jurisdic- 
tion. 

The public jurisdiction was to a considerable extent 
limited by the private jurisdiction exercised by every 

paterfamilias over the members of his family 
Private an ^ Yi\s slaves. As he had power of life and 

jurisdiction. x 

death, it may easily be imagined how im- 
portant this family jurisdiction must have been. 

Religion being in Rome, as everywhere in antiquity, 
a political and national institution, and therefore neces- 
„,, . sarily under the control of the state, the 

The priests . J . . . 

public priests and other ministers of religion were 

to a certain extent public servants ; though 
they differed from the secular magistrates in being ap- 
pointed not by the people but by other priests, and not 
for a limited term, but for life. They were not confined 
to their priestly functions. They might hold civil offices, 
and it could and did happen that even the chief pontiff, 
the head of the national worship, was praetor or consul. 



ch. x. Magistrates of the Republic. 123 

The king of sacrifices [rex sacrorum) was the solitary 
exception. He was not only lowered in authority, being 
placed under the chief pontiff, though nominally first in 
rank, but he was specially debarred from all public func- 
tions, civil or military. His office was preserved only as 
a relic of past times, and this is among the most note- 
worthy examples of that superstitious conservatism which 
made the Romans scruple formally to abolish old insti- 
tutions, even when they were superseded in reality. 
This tendency is especially perceptible when the old in- 
stitutions were sanctioned by religion, introduced by aus- 
pices with the special approbation of the gods, and con- 
nected with solemn periodical rites, as was the case with 
the office of the king of sacrifices. 

The office of pontiff was by far the most important of 
all those connected with religion. The pontiffs, three in 
number (afterwards seven), with a high pon- m 

•rr, •/• • \ \ • , , The pontiff; 

tiff (pontifex maximus) at their head, were the imerpre- 
not priests in the strict sense of the word, and human" 6 
not being specially attached to the service Iaw; 
of any particular god. They were rather a body of su- 
perintendents, guardians of the purity of the national 
religion and worship, interpreters of the divine law ; and 
as the divine law {fas) was the foundation of civil law, 
they were in possession of all those forms and technicali- 
ties which constituted a most essential feature in Roman 
jurisprudence, and the exclusive knowledge of which was 
doubly valuable at a time when the laws were not com- 
mitted to writing but jealously watched as a sacred and 
secret treasure. In the maze of numberless and subtle 
intricacies which the complicated system of religious ob- 
servances could not fail to present, the people, whether 
in their private capacity or as public servants, were 
obliged constantly to have recourse to the pontiffs, who 



124 Early Rome. ch. x. 

would advise them what solemn words had to be spoken, 
what times and seasons to be observed, what gestures 
and dress, what purifications and sacrifices were neces- 
sary to avert the anger of a deity ever ready to avenge 
the least, even involuntary, deviation from the prescribed 
rule. When a word wrongfully omitted or added, or an 
omen misinterpreted or neglected, might possibly bring 
irretrievable ruin on a worshipper, and could at any rate 
be expiated only by a certain definite rite or sacrifice, 
the advice of the pontiffs must have been in constant re- 
quest, and their influence must have been unbounded. 

Besides the strictly religious duties which they had to 

discharge, the pontiffs represented in some sense the 

science and literature of the nation, like the 

and the Christian clergy amid the universal igno- 

guardians of OJ 

science and ranee of the middle ages. They were the 
public astronomers, having to fix the sol- 
emn days for worship and political transactions, to 
divide the year into months and weeks, to keep it in ac- 
cordance with the course of the sun, a duty which they 
discharged with reckless irregularity, partly from igno- 
rance, partly to serve political and party purposes. They 
were also, as we have seen (page 22), the national 
chroniclers, and as such were bound to cultivate what 
might be called a literature. But their annals were no 
great literary performances, and the literature of Rome 
remained in a rudimentary condition, until Greek influ- 
ence made itself felt. 

The public auspices were in the keeping of another 

body of religious functionaries, the Augurs, who like the 

pontiffs were not really priests in the strict 

The augurs. ^^ q( ^ wQrd> ag they ha( j ^ tQ con< l uct 

any public worship. Their only duty was to assist the 
magistrates in taking the auspices, /. e., to act as their 



CH. x. Magistrates of the Republic. 125 

servants, when they wished to consult the will of the 
gods. They could not act of their own accord, but had 
to wait till they were bidden. They were therefore far 
from being able to exercise an independent authority 
or to counteract and thwart the public will. The signs 
sent by the gods were sent not to them, but to the magis- 
trates. All that the augurs had to do was to watch 
for them in the form prescribed by the sacred law, to 
interpret and to announce them to the magistrates ; and 
the spirit of formalism pervading the religion of Rome 
was such, that if an augur by mistake or purposely 
announced signs which he had not seen, the magistrate 
was justified in acting upon the announcement as if it 
had been correct, and the gods were supposed to be 
bound by the false announcement, though they might 
punish the augur for making it. 

The system of public auspices sprung up, like every 
religious custom, in a period of unbounded faith, at a 
time when no man would have ventured upon any enter- 
prise, unless he had honestly ascertained by undoubted 
signs the will of the approving deity. But this faith did 
not survive long the primeval period of sacerdotal kings. 
After the establishment of the republic the auspices 
began to be used as a political instrument to serve purely 
political ends. The science of the augurs was pressed 
into the service of the state, and they were made to 
announce favourable or unfavourable auspices as the 
public interest or even the interest of a party might re- 
quire. The election of political adversaries might thus 
be frustrated on the pretext that the auspices were 
against it ; a law might be rejected on the same plea, an 
expedition postponed or given up, a consul called back 
from a campaign, in short any measure annulled or 
thwarted by this means without making it appear that 



126 Early Rome. ch. xi. 

political considerations dictated the opposition. Of 
course such procedures would in the end dull the edge 
of the weapon employed. People will not submit to be 
influenced by religious scruples when they discover that 
their scruples are not shared by priests or rulers, who 
make good use of them for worldly purposes. This was 
shown at Rome in the conquest between the patricians 
and the plebeians. The clenching argument of the 
former was always this, that the plebeians had gradually 
acquired power and influence enough to extort equal 
political rights from their opponents, this argument was 
found to be based on false assumptions, for no difficulty 
was experienced by plebeian consuls, when they had to 
approach the gods under the old patrician auspices. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE SENATE OF THE REPUBLIC. 

"The Senate and the people of Rome" (S. P. Q. R., i. 
e. senatus pojpulusque Romanus) was the official designa- 
tion of the Roman commonwealth. The precedence 
occupied in this title by the senate is indicative of the 
prominence of that assembly in the public life of Rome. 
The senate was indeed the soul of that mighty body. 
The greatness of Rome is to be ascribed not so much to 
the eminent genius of a few men, nor to the civic virtues 
and martial spirit of the people, as to the ability dis- 
played at all times by this assembly, which united 
within itself whatever of worth or talent, of experience 
and political wisdom the whole nation possessed. 

The senate had neither executive, nor legislative, nor 
judicial power. It was merely a consultative body free 



CH. xi. The Senate. r.27 

to give advice to the magistrates, when asked 
for it, but unable either to give advice un- a consulta- 
asked or to enforce its acceptance. Its in- tlve body * 
fluence consisted in this, that it really represented the 
intelligence of the people, and generally gave a correct 
expression of the national will. 

The normal number of senators is supposed to have 
been three hundred in the kingly period (see p. 109). 
They were of course all patricians. The last 
king is said to have reduced the senate in Number of 

° senators. 

numbers and to have disregarded its advice. 
On the establishment of the republic the senate re- 
gained its old position. Brutus, or, according to other 
statements, Valerius added many new sena- 
tors and thus restored the former standard. New sena- 

, . tors added 

Our informants are of opinion that these after the 
new senators were taken from the plebe- i^rquin" 1 C 
ians ; and whilst some think that they were JEeiank 
by their nomination raised to the rank of 
patricians, others fancy that they remained plebeians — . 
that the senate, therefore, from the commencement of 
the republic contained a considerable number of plebeian 
members. This is, however, a notion which cannot be 
entertained. It is refuted by all that we know of the 
early constitutional struggles between patricians and ple- 
beians. The plebeians were for a long time after in a 
depressed condition, excluded from all participation in 
the government of the republic. It took them a cen- 
tury and a half before they were admitted to the con- 
sulship, and two hundred years elapsed before they were 
declared eligible for any priestly offices. Up to 445 B. c. 
they were excluded from intermarriage with the patri- 
cians. When after a severe struggle and an armed in- 
surrection tribunes of the plebs were created, to act as 



I2S Early Rome. ch. xi. 

patrons of the plebeians and to ward off the worst form 
of oppression, these tribunes were not allowed access to 
the senate, but had for a long time to take their seats 
outside the sacred precincts and to shout their interce- 
ding " veto" through the open door. How is it credible 
that such an assembly should have received a number 
of plebeian members in the very first year of the re- 
public ? To believe such an extraordinary statement, 
we should require better evidence than we have. 

But even supposing that Brutus or Valerius com- 
pleted the number of senators from the plebs, these 
new plebeian members must have died in course of time, 
and therefore, if no law was enacted to provide for 
plebeian successors, the senate would in a short time 
have become purely patrician again. Of such a law we 
have no trace, nor is it reported that the alleged act of 
Brutus or Valerius was ever repeated. We hear of no 
election of plebeian senators, nor of the presence of 
plebeians in the senate during the early period of the 
republic. The senate is constantly represented as the 
champion of the patrician order, without a dissentient 
voice. It is therefore an absolute impossibility that 
plebeians should have been received into it at the time 
in question. 

The arguments adduced against the possible recep- 
tion of plebeians into the senate by Brutus or Valerius do 
not tell with equal force against the assumption that 
plebeians were indeed received, but were at the same 
time raised to patrician rank. Yet even this seems im- 
probable, for such a precedent as the whole- 

Nor were the . 

new members sale creation of a number of new patrician 

raisedto the families from the body of plebeians could 

cSnl 0f Pat "' not have failed to be followed in after times, 

and would have led to drafting off the fore- 



ch. xi. The Senate. 129 

most leaders of the plebeians into the patrician ranks. 
It would have been such a weakening of the plebeian 
opposition that the struggle would have lost its asperity, 
and tradition would not have failed to commemorate 
some instances of transition from the lower to the higher 
order of citizens. But not a single instance is alleged. 
Nay, it appears to have been impossible in law. We 
are therefore compelled to assume that the new senators 
created by Brutus or Valerius were members of patrician 
houses. 

This assumption agrees with all that we know of the 
subsequent history. It is certain that the revolution 
which overthrew the kings led to a restora- 
tion of aristocratic, /. e. patrician govern- purefyjXri- 
ment. It was a revolution not in favour of c [ an ar ? d „ 

champion of 

the people, i. e. the mass of the lower ranks, patrician 
but, as we have already remarked, it was 
rather directed against their interests. The plebeians 
were so far from being benefited by it, that they had to 
rise in open rebellion, to obtain, not equality with the 
patricians, not a share in the government, but simple 
protection from arbitrary and illegal treatment. The 
senate during this time and for a long time after was 
most assuredly patrician throughout, and had never 
been tainted by the presence even of ennobled plebeians. 
The new senators added by Brutus or Valerius are 
said to have been called conscripti, in distinction from 
the older members, who were simply called _, 

^,, . . . , . / The title 

patres. Thus, it is said, arose the title patres patres 
conscripti, conscript fathers, which was the ^ns-nptt. 
official designation of the Roman senators, for patres 
conscripti, we are told, is contracted from patres et 
conscripti. This explanation of the name falls to the 
ground with the assumption that the new members dif- 



130 Early Rome. ch. xi. 

fered in rank from the older. It is an attempt of some 
antiquarian to account for the peculiar title of the senate, 
and cannot be based upon a genuine tradition. We 
must explain the title differently. We know (what not 
all the annalists knew) that the word patres meant 
originally not senators, but members of the patrician 
community as distinct from the plebeians. Hence not 
all the patres, in strictness of speech the lords or mas- 
ters of families, were senators, and to distinguish the 
latter from the body of patres, they were called patres 
conscripti, i.e. fathers whose names were "entered" 
[conscripta) on the lists of the senators. 

The Roman senate was a consultative body of men 

picked from the mass of the community and accustomed 

to meet periodically for the discussion of 

Difference public affairs. It resembled therefore in 

of the senate r . 

from modern many respects the representative assemblies 
par lamen ^ modern times, and upon the whole exer- 
cised a similar influence upon the direction of affairs. 
But in detail the difference is perhaps more striking than 
the resemblance ; and as we are too apt to form our 
ideas of the past from the analogies of the present, it is 
worth while to notice some of the most striking features 
in which the Roman senate differed from modern parlia- 
ments. 

The senate was not a representative assembly in the 

strict sense of the word. The members were not 

elected by the suffrage of the people ; nor 

The senate <jid they sit and vote for particular divisions 

not a repre- J x 

sentative of the nation or territory. They were nomi- 

nated by the executive government, i. e. by 
the consuls, and after the establishment of the censor- 
ship (in 443 b. c.) by the censors. Only in a limited degree 
and in an indirect way had the people any influence in 



ch. xi. The Senate. 131 

the nomination of senators, inasmuch as 
they elected the electors, and as the latter electing 

were bound to call into the senate men who 
enjoyed the confidence of the people, in the first in- 
stance, therefore, men who had discharged public 
offices. In the earlier period of the republic, when the 
two consuls were the only annual magistrates, the va- 
cancies in the senate caused by death could not all be 
filled up by ex-magistrates; and even when the number 
of annual magistrates was considerably increased, the 
senate could only be kept at its normal standard by the 
nomination of men who had not previously discharged 
a public office. Yet those senators who had passed the 
official chairs were always the leaders in the senate, and 
it appears that the other senators had only the right to 
vote and not that of justifying their vote by set speeches. 
As the senators held their seats for life, or at least 
during good behaviour, and as the senate accordingly 
was never renewed in toto by a dissolution, 

Character of 

it constituted a permanent, undying body, stability of 
only receiving fresh blood from time to time, t e senate - 
as old men dropped off and others were substituted in 
their place. They may, in short, be said to have held 
life peerages. This circumstance naturally gave to the 
senate the character of great stability and decided con- 
servatism. New ideas could make their way but slowly 
in such an assembly, and the people had no means of 
pushing measures of reform through a body which could 
not, like a modern parliament, be reconstructed on new 
principles at a general election. 

At the same time, the traditions of bygone times, 
the constitutional precedents, which in the absence of a 
written constitution contained the public law of the re- 
public, could not be better preserved in their purity than 



132 Early Rome. ch. xii. 

by such an assembly. If we take into consideration 
that not only the consuls after their year of office, but 
also pontiffs and other priests were life members of 
the senate, we can understand how the knowledge of 
many old institutions, and even a dim recollection of the 
events that led to their establishment, might be recorded 
and handed down for generations before it was con- 
signed to writing. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE POPULAR ASSEMBLIES OF THE REPUBLIC. 

The senate, as we have seen, had no direct influence on 
the election of magistrates or on legislative enactments. 
These powers were lodged in the assembly 
functK^nf of of tne people, and constituted the attributes 
the popular Q f sovereignty, which in the ancient repub- 

assembhes. ° J ' r 

lies the people never delegated to any per- 
son or select body, but invariably reserved to themselves 
as an inalienable right. 

The oldest form of a popular assembly in Rome was, 
as we have seen (pp. 36, 112), that of the curies [comiiia 
curiatd). It consisted of patricians alone, to the exclu- 
sion of plebeians. This assembly was never formally 
abolished, but in republican times it had lost all real 
m , . political power, and was retained only for 

The comi- *" r -,. 

tia curiata the sake of a few formalities more of a reh- 
superse e . gj ous than a political character, of which the 
most remarkable was the annual passing of the law ae 
imfterio, which conferred the military command on every 
newly elected consul, and thus resembled in some way 
the annual enactment of the mutiny bill in England. 



CH. xii. Assemblies of the People. 133 

When Roman history emerges from the legendary 
period we find another form of popular assembly in 
operation, the "assembly of centuries" 
{comitia cefituriata), organized on an en- centuriata'* 
tirely different plan. The plebeians were 
no longer excluded, nor was family relationship and de- 
scent the principle of classification. The whole people, 
patricians and plebeians, were divided into five classes 
according to a property qualification, and each of these 
five classes was subdivided into a certain number of 
voting units, called centuries, the first class haying 
eighty, each of the three succeeding classes twenty 
centuries, and the last class thirty, thus making up a 
total of 170 centuries or votes. In addition to these 
there were eighteen centuries of knights and four centu- 
ries of musicians, smiths, and carpenters, which were 
formed without regard to the amount of their property. 
The qualification of the members of the first class was, 
according to the statement of Livy, the possession of 
property valued above 100,000 asses, or pounds of cop- 
per. In each successive class this figure was less by 
25,000 asses, so that the fifth class embraced the citizens 
owning less than 25,000 asses (page 52). There are, in- 
deed, many controverted points of detail, arising from 
the fact that our informants differ from one another ; but 
as they agree in the general character of the arrange- 
ment, we need not here be detained by these variations. 

It must strike everyone at first sight that this is a 
division of the people on military principles. The 
people, in fact, was here looked upon as an 
army and divided into fighting bodies. The character of 
170 centuries of the five classes were all the comitia 

' centunata. 

infantry ; the cavalry was formed by the 

eighteen centuries of knights; the musicians and en' 



i 3 4 Early Rome. CH xii. 

gineers were equally essential branches of the service. 
Then each class consisted of an equal number of young 
fio-htino- men, and of veterans, the former destined to 
take the field, the latter reserved for the defence of the 
city. The men of the higher classes were bound to pro- 
vide themselves with more or less complete armour; the 
lower classes were light-armed ; and the horses for the 
cavalry were furnished by the state. Lastly, the place 
of meeting for this assembly was the field of Mars, and 
the signal for calling it together was not the voice of the 
public crier but the military trumpet. 

From all this it is evident that the original purpose of 

the centuriate assembly was to provide protection for the 

state by organizing the whole body of citi- 

Functions of zens as an army. It followed as a natural 

the comitia. . 

consequence that this body was entrusted 
with the decisions of peace and war and with the elec- 
tion of commanders, the two most important matters for 
every state and almost the only questions which would 
be of frequent occurrence in a rude community situated 
like that of Rome. Criminal offenders were looked upon 
as enemies of the country and were, very properly, tried 
by the same body which fought against foreign enemies. 
The final decision in legislative questions thus fell with- 
in the competency of the same military assembly of cen- 
turies, which thus became the sovereign assembly of the 
Roman people. 

But how did it first arise ? Our informants are ready 
with a very simple answer. They affirm that one of the 
kings called Servius Tullius, worked out the plan in his 

own brain, finished it in all its detail, and 

Alleged ori- . . 

gin of the was about to introduce it when he was mur- 
comkia cu- dered by Tarquin) the tyrant ; t hat during 

the reign of Tarquin the scheme of Servius 



ch. xii. Assemblies of the People. 135 

remained unexecuted, and that on his expulsion the Ro- 
mans drew it forth from the public archives and made it 
the foundation of their new republican form of govern- 
ment. 

We need hardly say that this cannot have been the 
way in which the centuriate comitia came into being, 
and supplanted the curies. This change can have come 
to pass only in consequence of a resolution which 
changed the old sacerdotal kingdom into a military 
monarchy, breaking up the primeval federal constitution 
with its three tribes of Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres, its 
thirty curies, its patrician houses and their clients, and 
raising the plebeians from their degraded position to the 
rank of Roman citizens. By this revolution Rome be- 
came a military power, and even when the kings were 
expelled, the military organization of the people created 
by them was retained and no doubt contributed to give 
Rome a superiority over her neighbours. The memory of 
the process which led to this great advance has been 
lost. Whether it was entirely worked out by an internal 
organic reform, or whether Etruscan rulers introduced it, 
cannot now be proved by any external evidence. Some 
few traces in the traditions point to the latter alternative ; 
for instance, the account of the opposition which the 
elder Tarquin met when he wished to reform the old 
centuries of knights (page 48). The native Sabine 
augur Attus Navius, we are told, resisted the foreign 
king, but was obliged to yield when Tarquin, though 
reforming the old institutions, left the old names unal- 
tered. Servius Tullius, the traditional author of the 
centuriate comitia, is represented in some annals as an 
Etruscan warrior named Mastarna, coming to Rome and 
settling there with his followers. These are indications 
of a reform caused by foreign influence. Yet there are 



136 Early Rome. ch. xii. 

not wanting traces which seem to show that the centuri- 
ate organization was an organic development of that of 
the curies — a theory which, however, does not exclude 
the possibility of foreign influence to facilitate and direct 
the process. 

The popular assembly could only meet when duly 
convoked by a consul on a day set apart by the pontifi- 
cal calendar for such meetings. Under the presidency 
of a consul the people were called upon to 
served at the approve or negative the motion which the 
theVomitfa consul, with the approval of the senate, 

centuriata. la j d before them> There wag nQ discussion 

of any kind. The people were simply asked to say yes 
or no. Their power went no further, and there is no 
doubt that in most cases the vote of the people was a 
mere matter of form. When a question had been duly 
discussed in the senate and was, upon a decree of the 
senate, brought before the people by the executive 
magistrate, it would have been strange indeed and an 
ominous sign of internal dissensions, if the people had 
voted contrary to what was expected of them. In ordi- 
nary times the consul acted under the authority of the 
senate and the people under the authority of the consul, 
and thus the three apparently independent agents 
worked in harmony together because in reality one of 
them led and the others followed. 

We have now drawn such a sketch of the first republi- 
can constitution as our scanty sources justify, 
ofpafrician Meagre as it is, it enables us to form an opi- 
power in the nion of its general character. It was a deci- 
dedly aristocratic form of government. The 
patricians were in possession of the executive power and 
of the priestly offices; they alone formed the senate, 
and they had such influence in the popular assembly 



ch. xii. Assemblies of the People. 137 

of centuries that they were able to carry elections and 
resolutions in it in the patrician interest. But we cannot 
estimate the influence of these institutions on the nation 
at large, unless we can ascertain the proportion which 
the patricians bore to the whole Roman people as to 
wealth and numbers. If the governing body formed 
but a small nobility and nevertheless engrossed all 
political power, the constitution of the republic was in 
the highest degree unsafe and the position of the patri- 
cians quite untenable, for the physical strength repre- 
sented by numbers is indispensable for the mainte- 
nance of the rule of one class over another. Unfortu- 
nately we have no data whatever to fix accurately the re- 
spective numbers of patricians and plebeians. In the be- 
ginning of the regal period, when the foundation of the 
state was laid, the patricians undoubtedly formed a peo- 
ple, or rather the people (the populus Romanus). They 
were the conquerors, who had won their position by force 
of arms. The conquered population, even if it had been 
more numerous, was not a match for them, and had to 
be content with toleration and protection. But it seems 
natural that a class which, like the patricians, received 
no addition from without, and which had to bear the 
brunt of all the numerous wars, must gradually have 
diminished in numbers, whereas the inferior citizens 
would be constantly recruited by the admission of con- 
quered enemies and liberated slaves, Thus it would be- 
come imperatively necessary to strengthen the patrician 
combatants by plebeians, and this process found its legal 
expression in the establishment of the centuriate comitia. 
To be able to judge of the true character of the comitia 
centuriata we ought to know what proportion the ple- 
beians bore in the centuries to the patricians. Did they 
form a considerable portion, or half, or more than 



138 Early Rome. ch. xii. 

half, or the whole of the 170 centuries of the infantry ? 
Did the patricians form the 18 centuries of knights or 
some of the centuries of the infantry, and how many ? 
By putting these questions we have indicated already 
that the Roman historians leave us in doubt, and that 
we are driven to form our opinions independently of 

their evidence. 

This is not the place to enumerate the various con- 
jectures of writers, still less to discuss them. Perhaps 
we ought simply to confess our ignorance and our in- 
ability to supply the gap left by the silence of our infor- 
mants. Still, without pretending to infallibility, we may 
venture to express an opinion, vague enough, 
Probable yet better than mere vacuity. We think 

origin 01 the J 

comitia cen- that when the centuriate assembly of the 
people was first established a body of ple- 
beian companies was formed equal to that of the old 
patrician companies of fighting men. We think that the 
traces of this division of the whole people into two 
equal parts are discernible in the fact that the first class 
alone in the centuritate comitia contained 80 centuries, 
and the four succeeding classes only 90 centuries. The 
first class therefore was almost equal to all the others 
put together. If we take into consideration that the first 
class had originally the name of classis (z. e. army) to 
itself, and that the four other classes were designated as 
"below the class" [infra classem), we can hardly fail to 
see that there must have been a difference of kind and 
not only of degree between the 80 centuries of the first 
class and the 90 centuries of the other classes. Now it 
is extremely probable that this difference was no other 
than the difference between patricians and plebeians, 
and that the reform wfrch established the centuriate 
comitia consisted in this, that an equal number of pie- 



CH. xii. Assemblies of the People. 139 

beian companies (or centuries) was added to the existing 
number of patrician companies to form the army and 
the national assembly. This is the reform which, as we 
have several times hinted before, was effected in Rome 
by those military kings who succeeded the sacerdotal 
kings of the primeval period. 

When the light of history begins to dawn upon the 
republic we find a state of things somewhat ditfering 
from this equal balance of patricians and plebeians in 
the army. It seems that the number of patricians must 
have greatly diminished, while that of the plebeians in- 
creased. The Roman armies are generally represented 
as essentially consisting of plebeians. Not so the politi- 
cal assembly of centuries. In this assembly 
the patricians for a long time had a decided The assem- 

r ° bly of centu- 

majority; at least they were sufficiently ries ceases to 

n . ... be military 

strong in it to carry the elections in their and becomes 
own favour. This shows that the comitia political, 
centuriata, though originally the ground- 
work of the military organization, had come to be merely 
a political organization, and that the army was now 
formed on a different principle. That such was the case 
later in the history of Rome is well known ; but what we 
do not know is the exact time when the separation took 
place between the political assembly and the army. In 
our opinion, this separation had taken place in that 
period of the republic which preceded the secession of 
the plebs ; perhaps it was coeval with the establishment 
of the republic. For as it threw the great burden of 
military service chiefly upon the plebeians, whilst it re- 
served for the patricians the superiority in the voting 
assembly, it is in keeping with that aristocratic spirit 
which, as we have seen, characterized the republican 
revolution. 



140 Early Rome. ch. xiii. 

The plebeians therefore found themselves in this 
position — that, whereas they were called upon to bear 
the burdens of citizenship and especially the greatest of 
them — viz., military service — that they had little influ- 
ence in the decisions of the sovereign assembly of citi- 
zens. Such a state of things could not last. It was 
overthrown by a great convulsion — the secession of the 
plebs, which might have led to the dissolution of the 
Roman commonwealth, but which, owing to the wise 
concessions of the senate and the patricians, laid the 
foundation of plebeian liberties. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE TRIBUNES OF THE PEOPLE. 

According to the account preserved by Livy and Di- 
onysius, the patricians no sooner heard of the death of 
the exiled Tarquin than they began to oppress the ple- 
beians, whom they had treated up to that time with 
great friendliness and leniency, in order to wean them 
from their attachment to the monarchy. Making use of 
the necessities of the impoverished commons, they lent 
them money on hard terms and relentlessly treated their 
insolvent debtors as slaves, loading them with fetters and 
driving their families from house and home. The ple- 
beians could not bear the outrages of their 
S h ece f L on of oppressors any longer. They rose in a body, 
left Rome, and encamped like a hostile 
army on a hill beyond the river Anio, at a distance of a 
few miles from the gates, with the intention of dissolving 
their connection with their native city and of forming a 
separate community of their own. The patricians, unable 
to reduce them by force, and seeing that without the 



CH. xni. Tribunes of the People. 141 

plebeians they were utterly helpless and exposed to 
foreign enemies, sent a message to the insurgents and 
entreated them to return. Both parties were inclined to 
a reconciliation. The plebeians asked for nothing but 
protection from the unjust treatment of patrician magis- 
trates. It was stipulated that they should have the right 
to elect magistrates of their own, called tribunes of the 
plebs [tribuni picbis), empowered to act as their special 
patrons and protectors. They were to be invested with 
the right of "intercession," by which they could stop 
any legal or administrative proceeding directed against 
plebeians. This right of intercession, of which the 
patricians had already the benefit, inasmuch as either 
consul could use it against his colleague, was now ex- 
tended to the plebeian tribunes, and afforded the same 
protection from arbitrary measures to a class of citizens 
which had hitherto been exposed without a remedy to 
illegal treatment. In order to give effect to the power of 
the tribunes, they were declared sacrosa?icti, i. e. inviola- 
ble. The curse of outlawry was pronounced against 
any man who should venture to resist or harm them. 
Upon these terms peace was concluded between the two 
orders of citizens, and the shedding of blood avoided ; 
the covenant thus made was called a " sacred law {lex 
sacrata), and the hill on which the plebeians had en- 
camped retained for all future ages the name of Mons 
sacer, the " sacred hill." 

As no stipulations were made in the covenant about 
anv remission of debts, nor the laws of debt altered, we 
may be sure that the cause which led to the 
secession was not a general indebtedness of Q f th^eces- 
the plebeians, as represented in the annals. slon - 
It is indeed highly improbable that in the primitive state 
of society in which we must imagine the Romans then 



142 Early Rome. ch. xiii. 

to have been, numerous loan transactions could have 
taken place. Moreover, as SirG. C. Lewis remarks, "it is 
difficult for us to conceive a state of society in which the 
poor are borrowers on a large scale." To strengthen 
this impression of doubt we find that for a hundred 
years following the secession, i. e. up to the disasters of 
the Gallic conflagration, no further mention is made of 
any distress of the plebeians caused by debts ; although, 
as already remarked, no remediary measures had been 
adopted. We may therefore feel sure that the cause of 
the secession was not the economic distress of the com- 
mons, but their exclusion from political rights, which left 
them without those safeguards from injustice which the 
patricians possessed. 

It is universally admitted that the original power of 
the tribunes was the /aw auxilii, or "right of aid." They 
could claim and did claim no more. They 
p r we?of the were f ar f rom usurping a share in the gov- 
tribunes. ernment of the republic. Their business 

was to protect plebeians from unjust treatment at the 
hands of patricians and from unjust treatment at the hands 
of patrician magistrates. From this humble origin they 
advanced by degrees to the power of controlling the 
whole civil government, and finally they became the in- 
struments by means of which the republican constitution 
was changed into the empire. 

At the same time with the tribuneship another plebeian 
Plebeian office was established, that of sediles, who were 
adiles. t0 act c hi e fly as the attendants and servants of 
the tribunes, and, like them, invested with inviolability. 

The reason of investing the plebeian magistrates with 

the character of inviolability and of calling 

The sacred ^ ^^ ^ conferred th}s r j ght « saC red 

laws," is to be found in the fact that from 



CH xin. Tribunes of the People. 143 

the patrician point of view the plebeians were looked 
upon as a distinct people, not fully and in every respect 
part of the populus Romanus. For this reason the agree- 
ment between the two parties was concluded in the form 
of an international treaty, with due observance of all 
those ceremonies — chiefly sacrifices and oaths — which 
were considered necessary when independent nations 
came to terms of amity. Oaths are an appeal not to a 
civil magistrate, but to a divine power, — the only power 
that can arbitrate between independent states. They are 
always employed to bind in their consciences those who 
cannot be compelled by a secular authority to fulfil their 
engagements The patricians and the plebeians could 
not be looked upon as entirely members of one com- 
munity as long as only the patricians had, through their 
auspices, intercourse with the gods of Rome, and for 
that reason excluded the plebeians from the government 
of the state ; as long, also, as marriages between patri- 
cians and plebeians were unlawful. Therefore the magis- 
trates of the plebs required to be specially protected by 
a sacred law, and, like the ambassadors of a foreign 
power, to be declared inviolable. 

The ancient writers are unanimously of opinion that 
the offices of tribune and aedile were first created during 
the secession, and that they were in fact the . . . 

. « Antiquity of 

fruit of that secession. But we may well ask the tribune- 
if it is likely that the plebeians, who, as we s ip ' 
have just seen, formed a separate community for them- 
selves, had before that time no sort of organization of 
their own and no officers to regulate their affairs. It seems 
highly probable that the plebeians were not without such 
special plebeian magistrates, and if so, it seems most 
natural that these magistrates were no other than those 
tribunes and aediles whom they chose as their legal pa- 



144 Early Rome. ch. xm. 

trons. The novelty introduced by the treaty of peace on 
tne sacred hill consisted accordingly not in the creation 
of new offices, but in the solemn acknowledgment on 
the part of the patricians that the old plebeian magis- 
trates should, under the guarantee of a lex sacrata, 
have authority to control the official acts even of patri- 
cian magistrates. 

What particular acts of patrician magistrates were 
likely to be specially obnoxious to plebeians we are not 
told ; but it is not difficult to guess what they were. The 
principal burden of the citizens was the military service. 
The carrying on of the civil government entailed no ex- 
pense. The Roman people did not groan 
SiTco^scrip- under the weight of taxes. But every man 
tion by the was liable to be called out for military ser- 

tribunes. . J 

vice, and it is clear that great injustice might 
be practised by the consuls if they disregarded the spe- 
cial claims of exemption which individual citizens might 
have. In such cases the tribunes would interfere, and 
their interference might amount to an inhibition of the 
whole conscription, so that they might actually veto a 
war if they were so minded. Their right in this respect 
resembled, therefore, the privilege of a popular chamber 
in modern times which refuses the supplies ; and as this 
right has secured to modern parliaments the chief con- 
trol of the state, so the jus auxilii of the tribunes con- 
tained the germ of their future power. 

The number of tribunes originally chosen is stated 
variously to have been either two or five. This diver- 
Number of gence of opinion is of little moment and af- 
fects only a very short period of time. All 
authors are agreed that from the Publilian law, passed 
in 471 b. c, i. <?., 22 years after the first secession, the 
number was five, and was raised to ten in 457 b. c. 



CH. xiii. Tribunes of the People. 145 

It is more annoying that doubts should exist with 
regard to the original mode of the election of the tri- 
bunes. Owing to the partly vague and partly . . 
contradictory statements of the writers on mode of 
whom we depend for our information, the 
greatest difference of opinion prevails on this subject. 
We cannot here enter into a discussion of their conflict- 
ing statements, and it is therefore better at once to record 
the result to which a careful examination of the whole 
subject must lead us. It is this : that the tribunes of the 
plebs could have been elected neither by the patrician 
comitia curiata, nor by the military comitia centuriata, 
in which patricians and plebeians were mixed, but only 
by the comitia tributa, — the assembly of the plebeian 
tribes. What these comitia were we shall now proceed 
to inquire. 

The old patrician popuhis, as we have seen, was divi- 
ded into tribes (the Ramnes, Tides, and Lu- 
ceres), which were a division of the people, comitia 

not of the territory. This division was the curiata. 

basis on which the comitia curiata were established (pp. 

37. in). 

In the beginning of the republican period this division 
was superseded, and the division of the people into five 
classes was substituted, as we have seen, according to a 
property qualification. Thus arose the comitia centuriata. 
The five classes contained both patricians and plebeians. 
They were established in the first place for military, in 
the second, for political purposes. As an assembly for 
the election of the higher magistrates and for legislation, 
they continued in force to the end of the republic, but 
they ceased at an early period to be the basis on which 
the army was formed. The conscriptions for the army 
as far back as the light of history penetrates, were made 



146 Early Rome. ch xiil 

"T. /. ■ not according to classes, but according to 

Division of „ & , , ' . . f . , 

the land into tribes, i. e., wards and districts, into which 
local mbes. the tQwn and territory were divided. These 

local tribes accordingly had nothing in common with the 
old patrician tribes but the name. Each tribe consisted 
of the Roman citizens settled within its boundaries, with- 
out regard either to descent or to property. 

We are not informed when this division into tribes 
was first made. As long as the patricians had their own 
distinct organization (the old patrician tribes and curies), 
the division of the territory into local tribes would most 
probably affect the plebeians only, and whatever organi- 
zation they had for self-government would be based on 
this division into local tribes. If they elected officers of 
their own, the forerunners of the famous tribunes of the 
plebs, these officers were of course elected by and for 
the tribes, whence they also derived their name. At 
some period which we cannot fix with accuracy, these 
tribes were made military districts, i. e., the troops were 
levied tributim, according to tribes. In fact, the whole 
administration of the republic was adjusted to this divi- 
sion of the territory, and when it became necessary to 
raise a tribute, or war tax, for the expenses of a cam, 
paign, the tax was assessed tributim, according to tribes, 
from which circumstance it also received its name. 

Thus arose a third form of popular assembly, the 
comitia tributa, or assembly of tribes. Being plebeian 
in its origin and representing that com- 
charaSerof munity of plebeians who, as we have seen, 
tribut°a mitia formed a distinct body in the Roman state 
and almost a separate people, apart from 
the patricians, the comitia tributa preserved this plebeian 
character throughout the whole history of the republic. 
Whereas the comitia curiata had been an aristocratic 



ch. xiii. Tribunes of the People. 147 

organization from which the plebeians were excluded, 
and the comitia centuriata had given a preponderance 
to wealth, the comitia tributa were purely democratic. 
They gave rich and poor an equal vote and excluded the 
patricians who were indeed unfit to assist in the transac- 
tion of the internal affairs of the plebeian body, and 
especially to take a share in the election of the tribunes 
of the plebs — officers whose chief duty it was to control 
the actions of patrician magistrates, and thus to be the 
special patrons of the plebeians. 

By the treaty on the Mons Sacer, the comitia of tribes 
— i. e. the plebeian assemblies of citizens — were first re- 
cognized by the patricians as invested with The com i tia 
political rights, for the patricians bound tributa re- 

r ° ' r cognized as 

themselves to treat the tribunes of the plebs a sovereign 
elected in those comitia as persons invested 
with public authority. They could no longer ignore the 
public and official character of the tribunes, which we 
may suppose might have been their practice before the 
secession. The comitia of the plebs, therefore, from 
this moment acquired rights co-extensive with the rights 
of the comitia of centuries, though exerted in a different 
direction. If the centuries continued to elect the con- 
suls, the tribes now elected tribunes and sediles, and the 
authority of these officers was acknowledged by the 
whole community. By-and-by, as we shall see, the 
comitia of tribes extended their sphere of action, whilst 
the centuries remained stationary. The comitia of tribes 
under the direction of the tribunes of the plebs became 
the moving power in the commonwealth to which all 
progress in constitutional and civil law is chiefly dm*. 
The comitia of centuries merely retained the privileges 
which they already possessed, viz. the- election of consuls 
(and afterwards of praetors and censors, which offices 



148 Early Rome. ch. xiv. 

had branched off from the consulship), the right to de- 
clare war, the decision in criminal appeals, and the 
legislation in constitutional law. 

The original number of local tribes was twenty ; four 

of them were city wards, the remaining sixteen country 

districts. Soon after the establishment of 

Number of t h e re p U blic a new tribe was added, and 

local tribes. l 

their number thus raised to twenty-one ; 
this number of tribes remained stationary for upwards of 
one hundred years. Then began the career of conquest. 
New tribes were formed out of the territory acquired in 
Etruria, Latium, and in the land of the Aequians and 
Volscians, until in 241 B.C. the number thirty-five was 
reached, and the Roman citizens had become so nume- 
rous and lived at such great distances from one another 
that meetings in Rome for legislation and election had 
become physically impossible to the mass of them. 
Nevertheless, the Romans, with their spirit of conser- 
vatism, retained the comitia tributa to the end of the re- 
public, when they were swept away with the general 
wreck of the old worn-out and antiquated institutions. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE AGRARIAN LAW OF SPURIUS CASSIUS. 

The great disparity of political rights which separated 
patricians and plebeians had its counterpart in the 
economic relations of the two classes of 
Wealth and citizens. The patricians are always repre- 
sented as the rich, the plebeians as the 
poor. In a rude age, when the industrial arts and 
trade were all but unknown, wealth consisted chiefly in 



CH. xiv. Agrarian Law of Spurius Cassius. 149 

the possession of land and cattle. The Latin tongue, 
by calling money pecunia, i. e. "cattle " (chattels), suffi- 
ciently denotes this original identity of wealth with land 
and the produce of land. That the patricians, as the. 
wealthy, were the chief owners of the soil, we might 
infer h priori from the circumstance of their being the 
governing class and the original conquerors 
of the land ; for it was the invariable prac- conquered 
tice in ancient Italy (a practice followed by land * 
the Romans themselves in historical times) for the con- 
querors to treat the conquered land as forfeited, and to 
make such new dispositions with regard to it as suited 
their purposes. They usually left only a portion of it, 
one half or even less, to the old owners, and took the 
remainder for themselves. This was declared public 
land, i. e. the land of the populus or governing people, 
and was occupied by members of the ruling body, who 
used either to cultivate it themselves or give it in lots to 
be held and cultivated by their dependents or clients. 
None of this land reserved for the populus could be 
occupied by the inferior class of citizens, nor could such 
portions of it as were left in pasture be used by them. 
Other restrictions may be supposed to have been made ; 
for instance, the prohibition of the free purchase or 
inheritance of land which had been set apart for the 
ruling class. 

As long as the memory of conquest was fresh in men's 
minds, such institutions would not be felt to involve 
cruelty or hardship ; for, according to the 
law of ancient warfare, not only the pro- Riseofdis- 

' J r content 

perty, but even the liberty and life of a among the 
conquered people were at the mercy of 
their conquerors. Whatever was left to them was a 
free gift, and would be appreciated as such. But when 



150 Early Rome. en. xiv. 

in course of time the two classes had gradually grown 
into one people, it would be felt that the traces of the 
original wrong inflicted by the stronger ought to be 
effaced. As demands were made by the plebeians 
for civil rights, so they naturally began to claim a 
release from those restrictions under which they had 
hitherto lain with regard to the tenure and enjoyment 
of land. 

This is the origin and meaning of the agrarian laws 
which agitated the early republic side by side with the 

contests about political rights. They did 
agrarian not and could not refer to the disposal of 

laws. newly-conquered land ; for at the time 

when we hear of the first agrarian disputes there were 
no new conquests made by Rome and therefore there 
was no land to distribute. At a later period the case 
was different. When Rome entered on her career of 
conquest, and large tracts of public land were at her 
disposal, the agrarian disputes referred to these new 
acquisitions and had consequently an entirely different 
character. 

The first agrarian law is said to have been proposed 
by a patrician, Spurius Cassius, who was consul in the 

year of the secession, 493 B.C., and again 
posals of seven years later. The descriptions of his 

Spurius proposals given by our informants are so 

confused and palpably erroneous that we 
can make nothing of them. They proceed on the false 
assumption that Rome had a great deal of conquered 
land to distribute, and they mix up the account of the 
agrarian law with the conditions of a league said to have 
been concluded at the same time between Rome and her 
neighbours, the Latins and the Hernicans. We cannot 
attempt here to unravel the errors into which the annal- 



CH. xv. League with the Latins. 151 

ists have fallen, nor to discuss the different opinions 
held about the nature of the agrarian law of Cassius. 
We confine ourselves to pointing out the apparent con- 
nection of this proposal with the struggles of the ple- 
beians for more equal rights, which seem to be evident 
from the facts that Spurius Cassius was consul in the 
year of the secession and that he brought forward his 
motion in his next consulship. He was the first patri- 
cian who espoused the cause of the plebeians, and the 
first also who paid the price of such a policy. He was 
charged with treasonable designs, and condemned to 
death ; his law was not carried into effect. It remained 
a dead letter, though it acted as a stimulus to continued 
agitation. 

CHAPTER XV. 

THE LEAGUE WITH THE LATINS AND HERNICANS. 

The principle of confederation, which was the chief 
cause of Roman greatness, seems to have been common 
to all the aboriginal races of Italy, and, in 

° , - , . Prevalence 

fact, was forced upon them by the necessi- of confede- 
ties of their situation. In a time of almost ratlons - 
incessant warfare an isolated community would soon 
have been the prey of some powerful foe, if it had not 
sought security in an alliance with neighbouring cities 
equally in want of assistance. Thus arose the old league 
of the Latins, of which in pre-historic times Alba Longa 
was the head, and the temple of Jupiter Latiaris on the 
Alban mount, the common sanctuary. We do not 
know when and how this league was dissolved and Alba 
destroyed : for the story of her destruction by the third 
king of Rome is in every respect legendary. 



152 Early Rome. ch. xv. 

Yet there is no reason to doubt that Rome, as reported, 
succeeded Alba in the headship of Latium. We hear 
of no other power strong enough to have 
head of a* brought about the downfall of that city ; 

l P e r a e " h J. storic and Rome was always looked upon as the 
successor of Alba, and took the presidency 
at the annual festival of the Latins on the Alban mount. 
The stories of the later kings represent Rome as ruling 
over the Latins. Under Servius Tullius it is said that a 
temple of Diana was built on the Aventine hill as a 
common sanctuary of the Latins and the Romans. The 
younger Tarquin, we are told, reduced the towns of 
Latium by force and fraud, and extended his dominion 
over the whole country. Whatever may be the truth of 
these stories, the supremacy of Rome over Latium, if it 
really existed towards the close of the regal period, came 
to an end with the expulsion of the kings. In all proba> 
bility, as we have seen above, the Latins helped the 
Romans to throw off the common yoke, and both Latins 
and Romans became free at the same time. 

The pretended victory of Rome over the combined 
cities of Latium, at Lake Regillus, is a fable or a misre- 
presentation. (See p. 88.) The Latins were 
berween^ 6 so f ar from being conquered by republican 
&thi e m and Rome, that the same year — 493 b. c. — 
which witnessed the secession of the plebs 
and the establishment of the plebeian tribunate, is 
marked by the conclusion of a treaty between Rome and 
Latium, in which both appear as independent powers. 

That such a treaty was concluded is certain, for it 

lasted for more than a century and a half — that is to say, 

Motives fo down to a period in which the leading events 

concluding are no longer subject to historical doubts. 

Nor is it difficult to understand the motives 



ch. xv. League with the Latins. 153 

which induced the two nations to conclude such an alli- 
ance. It was a renewal of that old union between the 
two kindred races, which appears to have been tempo- 
rarily dissolved after the Roman revolution, and it was 
dictated by the common interests of both. The war 
with the Tarquins and the Etruscans, as we have sur- 
mised, was a common war of liberation ; and the Etrus- 
cans remained for many years the common enemies of 
Rome and Latium. Other aggressors threatened both 
nations in the east and south. In the east the Aequians, 
a hardy and rapacious tribe of mountaineers, and in the 
south the warlike Volscians, were pressing upon them. 
The Latin towns formed for Rome a line of fortifications 
on the south and east against these assaults, and Rome 
defended for Latium the line of the Tiber against the 
Etruscans on the western and northern sides. Thus 
both peoples were largely benefited by a league for 
mutual protection, and it seems to be hardly doubtful 
that the preservation of the independence as well of La- 
tium as of Rome is due chiefly to this wise policy. 

The league between Rome and Latium is said to have 
been concluded by Spurius Cassius, who was consul in 
the year 493 B. c, and author of the agrarian law in his 
third consulship, 486 B. c. Soon afterwards another 
nation, the Hernicans, who lived further 
eastward between the Aequians and the effect of the 
Volscians, joined the league on equal terms. league. 
The object of the league being simply mutual protection 
in war, it left the independence of each contracting city 
unimpaired. But it is in the nature of such alliances 
that the stronger members gradually acquire an ascen- 
dency which is very nearly akin to dominion. Rome, 
by virtue of her extent and population, was by far the 
most powerful and consequently the leading member of 



154 Early Rome. ch. xvi. 

the league. In course of time some of the Latin towns 
fell into decay owing to the ravages of the Aequians and 
Volscians; others were actually destroyed and laid 
waste ; others fell into the hands of the enemies and 
became Aequian or Volscian towns in Latium. Rome 
and her allies were by no means always victorious. On 
the contrary, for more than a hundred years they suf- 
fered more harm than they inflicted. The Volscians 
succeeded in penetrating into the very heart of Latium, 
threatening even Rome itself. The Aequians lay like a 
hostile garrison on Mount Algidus in the immediate 
vicinity of Tibur and Praeneste. War raged from year 
to year. Military training was more important tnan 
peaceful work. The Roman citizens and their Latin 
allies acquired in this hard school that discipline and 
warlike spirit, that unshaken bravery and endurance 
which distinguished them ever after. Whatever the 
hardships and miseries of this period were, the walls of 
Rome resisted all attacks, whilst the Latins suffered so 
much that they were reduced from the rank of allies to 
that of subject. The league thus proved highly benefi- 
cial to Rome. It served to protect her, and it raised her 
to a pre-eminence which she could not have otherwise 
attained. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE WARS WITH THE VOLSCIANS AND AEQUIANS. 

The history of the wars with the Volscians and Aequi- 
ans, as narrated by Livy, is destitute of all historical 
value. It is a succession of battles, sieges, triumphs 
and reverses, which are evidently the product of the 
imagination, with a very slight infusion of trustworthy 



CH. xvi. Volscian and A e qui an Wars. 155 

tradition. Exaggeration, vainglory and repetition, reck- 
less invention and contradiction are discoverable on 
every page. It would be in the highest degree unprofit- 
able to examine these accounts in detail, and to burthen 
the memory with facts, dates and names so unreal. We 
shall content ourselves with justifying this opinion by 
reviewing shortly the celebrated stories of Coriolanus 
and Cincinnatus, as characteristic both of the wars to 
which they refer and of the historians who relate them. 
In the year after the secession of the plebs (492 b. c.) 
there was a famine in Rome ; for during the civil con- 
tention the plebeians 'had not cultivated ^ 

1 • 11 ii iii-i The st °ry 

their own lands, and they had laid waste ofCorio- 

the fields of their adversaries. There was, 
therefore, great distress among the poor plebeians, and 
they would have fallen victims to hunger if the consuls 
had not bought corn in Etruria and distributed it to the 
starving people. But even this was not sufficient, and 
the people suffered great want, till corn arrived from 
Sicily, which Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, sent as 
a present to the Romans. 

There was at that time in Rome a brave patrician, 
whose name was Caius Marcius. He had conquered 
the town of Corioli in the preceding year when the 
Romans were carrying on war with the Volscians, and 
for this reason his fellow-soldiers had given him the 
surname Coriolanus. This man set himself stoutly 
against the plebeians, for he hated them because they 
had won the tribuneship from the senate. He therefore 
advised the consuls not to divide the corn among the 
plebeians unless they surrendered their newly-acquired 
right and abolished the office of the tribunes. 

When the plebeians heard this they were enraged, 
and would have killed him had not the tribunes pro- 



156 Early Rome. ch. xvi. 

tected him from the fury of the crowd, and accused 
him before the assembly of the people of having broken 
the peace and violated the sacred laws. But Coriolanus 
mocked the people and the tribunes, showing haughty 
defiance and presumptuous pride ; and as he did not 
appear before the people assembled to try him, he was 
banished. Vowing that he would be revenged on his 
enemies, he went to Antium, where he lived as the 
guest of Attius Tullias, the chief of the Volscians. After 
this the two men consulted together how they might 
persuade the Volscians to make war on the Romans.- It 
happened that at this time the great games were cele- 
brated in Rome in honour of Jupiter ; and a great num- 
ber of Volscians came to Rome to see the games. 
Then Attius Tullius went secretly to the consuls, and 
advised them to take care that his countrymen did not 
break the peace during the festive season. When the 
consuls heard this, they sent heralds through the town, 
and caused it to be proclaimed that all Volscians should 
leave the town before night. The Volscians, exaspe- 
rated at this outrage to their nation, proceeded in a 
body to return home by the Latin road. This road led 
past the spring of Ferentina, where at one time the 
Latins used to hold their councils. Here Attius was 
waiting for his countrymen, and excited them against 
Rome, saying that they had been shut out unjustly from 
sharing in the sacred festivities, as if they had been 
guilty of sacrilege, or were not worthy to be treated as 
allies and friends by the Roman people. Thus a new 
war with Rome was decided on, and Attius Tullius and 
C. Marcius Coriolanus set out with a large army, and 
conquered in one campaign many of the most important 
towns of Latium. 

After this the Volscians advanced to Rome, and en- 



ch. xvi. Volscian and Aequian Wars. 157 

camping near the Fossa Cluilia, five miles from the 
town, they laid waste the land of the plebeians round 
about. Then the Romans were seized with despair, and 
were afraid to advance against the Volscians or fight 
them in the field ; but looking for deliverance only from 
the mercy of their conquerors, they sent the principal 
senators as ambassadors to Coriolanus to sue for peace. 
But Coriolanus answered that, unless the Romans re- 
stored to the Volscians all the conquered towns, peace 
would not be granted. When the same ambassadors 
came a second time to ask for more favourable condi- 
tions, Coriolanus would not even see them. Thereupon 
the chief priests came to his tent in their sacred robes 
and with the insignia of their office, and tried to calm his 
arger. But they strove in vain. At last the noblest 
Roman matrons came to Veturia, the mother of Coriola- 
nus, and to Volumnia, his wife, and persuaded them to 
accompany them into the enemy's camp, and with their 
prayers and tears to soften the conqueror's heart and to 
save the town, which the men could not protect with 
their arms. 

Now, when the procession of Roman matrons ap- 
proached the Volscian camp, and Coriolanus recognized 
his mother, his wife, and his little children, he was deeply 
moved, and listened to the entreaties of the matrons, and 
granted their request, saying, " O, my mother! Rome 
thou hast saved, but thou hast lost thy son." And forth- 
with he led the army of the Volscians away from Rome, 
and gave back all the conquered towns. But he never 
returned to Rome, because he had been banished by 
the people, and he closed his life in exile among the 
Volscians. 

The whole of this pretty story when examined by the 
light of historical criticism vanishes into air. Neither 

M 



158 Early Rome. ch. xvi. 

the hero's name, nor his banishment, nor his 

Criticism of . 

the story of rapid conquests, nor the intercession 01 the 
Coriolanus. Roman matrons, belong to history. We 
know for certain that Scipio Africanus, more than 400 
years later, was the first Roman who received a surname 
to commemorate a conquest. Hence Caius Marcius 
could not have been called Coriolanus from the capture 
of Corioli. Besides, Corioli could hardly have been 
taken by the Romans from the Volscians in 492, as in 
493 it is enumerated among the Latin cities which con- 
cluded a league with Rome. The Volscians, the constant 
enemies of the republic, could not be present at the 
Roman games, nor could they assemble at the grove of 
Ferentina, which was a try sting-place of the Latins. 
Coriolanus could not be banished by the Roman ple- 
beians on the accusation of the tribunes, for the tribunes 
who had just been elected had as yet only the right of 
protecting plebeians from unjust treatment, not the 
power of prosecuting patricians before an assembly of 
the plebs. The rapid conquests of the Volscians under 
the command of Coriolanus are nothing short of miracu- 
lous. The capture of twelve towns in one summer cam- 
paign is a success which suits fiction, but is unequalled 
in the history of early Rome. Yet after such conquests 
Coriolanus insists upon the Romans giving up these 
towns, as if he could not hold what he had taken ; and 
when he is induced by private and personal motives to 
make peace, he is so reckless of the interests of his 
Volscian friends, who after all were the real conquerors, 
that he generously restores his conquests to the Romans. 
These Romans, at other times so ready to come forward 
and fight their enemies, shrink like cowards behind their 
walls and send messengers to entreat the mercy of the 
conqueror, without, however, offering the slightest con- 



ch. xvi. Volscian and Aequian Wars. 159 

cessions. They hit upon a novel scheme. They send 
priests to propitiate the anger of their exasperated fellow- 
citizen, a thing which they never did before or after, and 
which their whole system of public and sacred law 
forbade. More than that, an embassy of matrons 
comes out to the hostile camp. We almost fancy we see 
again the Sabine matrons who rushed between the 
angry combatants to establish peace in the time of 
Romulus. Such a scene is effective and proper in fiction, 
but impossible in the history of Rome. Neither matrons 
nor priests could be employed on political embassies. 
The writer who invented such a story must have been 
ignorant of Roman institutions. 

What circumstance gave rise to the story of Coriolanus 
it is impossible for us to say. It may be a mere fiction 
designed to glorifv the Roman matrons. At 

. ' , i i ,. , Effect of the 

any rate, it was not calculated to throw light Volscian 
on the history of the Volscian wars. These 
wars continued, apparently without interruption, during 
the whole period we have under review. The Volscians 
obtained a settlement in southern Latium, where their 
most important town was the seaport, Antium. But 
after the decemvirate (450 b. c.) their power visibly de- 
creased. The Romans and Latins recovered some of 
the lost ground, and finally extended their league over 
the whole district from the Tiber to the confines of Cam- 
pania. 

Peace was concluded with the Aequians in the year 
459 B.C., and the Romans expected no hostilities on that 
side. But soon after this the faithless Aequi- „, 

1 * 1 lit -- r^ The story 

ans suddenly invaded the country of Tus- ofCincin- 

culum, and their commander, Gracchus na *us. 

Cloelius, pitched his camp on the hill Algidus, the east- 
ern spur of the Alban range, from whence he laid waste 



160 Early Rome. ch. xvi. 

the land of the Roman allies. Here Quintus Fabius ap- 
peared before him at the head of an embassy, and de- 
manded satisfaction and compensation. But Cloelius 
laughed at the ambassadors, and, mocking them, said 
they should lay their complaints before the oak tree 
under which his tent was pitched. Then the Romans 
took the oak and all the gods to witness that the 
Aequians had broken the peace and had begun an un- 
righteous war; and without delay the consul Minucius 
led an army against them. But the chances of war were 
not in his favour. He was defeated, and blockaded in 
his camp. At this news terror prevailed in Rome as if 
the enemy were at the very gates ; for the second consul 
was far away with his army, fighting with the Sabines, 
the allies of the Aequians. 

There was nothing now to be done but to name a 
dictator, and only one man seemed to be fit to fill the 
post. This was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a noble 
patrician who had long served his country in peace and 
war as senator and consul, and was then living quietly 
at home cultivating his small estate with his own hands. 
Now, when the messengers of the senate came to Cin- 
cinnatus to announce to him that he was nominated 
dictator, they found him ploughing, and he had taken 
off his garments, for the heat was great. Therefore he 
first asked his wife to bring him his toga, that he might 
receive the message of the senate in a becoming manner. 
And when he had heard their errand, he went with them 
into the town, accepted the dictatorship, and chose for 
the master of the horse Lucius Tarquitius, a noble but 
poor patrician. Then, having ordered that all the courts 
of justice should be closed, and all common business 
suspended till the danger was averted from the country, 
he summoned all men who could bear arms to meet in 



ch. xvi. Volscian and Aequian Wars. 161 

the evening on the Field of Mars, every man with twelve 
stakes for ramparts, and provisions for five days; and 
before the sun went down the army had started off, and 
reached Mount Algidus at midnight. 

Now, when the dictator saw that they were drawing 
near to the enemy, he bade the men halt and throw 
their baggage in a heap, and he quietly surrounded the 
camp of the Aequians, and gave orders to make a ditch 
round the enemy and drive in the stakes. Then the 
Romans raised a loud cry, so that the Aequians were 
overcome by terror and despair ; but the legions of the 
consul Minucius recognized the war-cry of their country- 
men, seized their arms, and sallied forth from their 
camp. Thus the Aequians were attacked on both sides, 
and seeing there was no escape, surrendered, and prayed 
for mercy. Cincinnatus granted them their lives, and 
allowed them all to depart home unharmed after passing 
naked under the yoke, except Gracchus Cloelius and the 
other commanders. These he kept as prisoners of war, 
and he divided the spoil among his victorious soldiers. 
In this manner Cincinnatus rescued the blockaded army, 
and returned in triumph to Rome ; and when he had de- 
livered his country from its enemies, he laid down his 
office on the sixteenth day, and returned to his fields, 
crowned with glory and honoured by the people, but 
poor, and contented in his poverty. 

The story of Cincinnatus differs in character from that 
of Coriolanus, and seems to have a genuine historical 
basis. It is not a mere fiction, but only a 
boastful, distorted, and exaggerated account tions gg of a the 
of what may have really happened, and it is story< 
in so far a good specimen of the usual performances of 
the Roman annalists. It is also worthy of notice that 
with some variations it is related not less than five times 



1 62 Early Ro?ne. ch. xvii. 

under five different years (466, 460, 458, 443, 440 b. a). 
It cannot, therefore, contribute much to our knowledge 
of the wars with the Aequians. 

These wars continued to harass Rome and her allies 
for the whole of the first century of the republic, and, 

like the Volscian wars, contributed to enforce 
of h the Cter military discipline upon the citizens and to 
Aequian improve their tactics, whilst the constantly 

impending danger arising from them had no 
doubt the effect of mitigating the internal conflicts be- 
tween patricians and plebeians. For nearly fifty years 
the Romans and their allies were hard pressed. The 
Aequians established themselves on the Alban hills 
in the heart of Latium, whence they pushed their inroads 
to the very walls of Rome. But it seems that after the 
decemvirate the Aequians, like the Volscians, relaxed in 
their national vigour. Whether owing to the hostility of 
the Samnites in their rear, or to other causes, they gradu- 
ally ceased to be dangerous, so that the Romans were 
enabled to turn their attention to the north-west and to 
begin their career of conquest on the side of Etruria. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

WAR WITH THE ETRUSCANS. 

When, in the beginning of the republic, the Etruscans 
were expelled from Latium, they did not entirely lose 
their hold of the country on that side of the 
Jan e town U of Tiber. They continued masters of Fidenae, 
Fidenae. a stron g town at a distance of but five miles 

from Rome. Constant hostilities seem to have gone on 
between the Romans and the people of Fidenae, in 
which the latter were usually supported by their coun- 



ch. xvii. Etruscan Wars. 163 

trymen across the Tiber, especially the Veientines. In 
fact, Fidenae, at an equal distance from Rome and Veii, 
seems to have been a military post of the latter town, a 
tete de pont on the left bank of the Tiber, by which the 
Veientines were enabled, whenever they liked, to cross 
the river into Latium and to harass Rome and her allies 
by their plundering incursions. 

It was obviously to obtain a similar footing on the 
Etruscan side of the Tiber that in 479 b. c. 
the Romans determined to establish a fort orTtheTcre- 
on the small river Cremera not far from Veii. mera- 
Such military settlements were a characteristic feature 
of the early wars in Italy, as well as Greece, as they 
enabled invaders to secure their hold on conquered dis- 
tricts. The colonies which Rome established in the 
course of her conquests were mainly such military posts, 
and proved the successful means of incorporating gra- 
dually the whole peninsula in the dominion of the re- 
public. 

The settlement on the Cremera gave rise to a popular 
legend not less characteristic of the early wars and of 
the style of the early annals than the stories 
of Coriolanus and Cincinnatus. The noble Story of the 

Fabn. 

house of the Fabii, it is said, volunteered to 
secure Rome from the inroads of the Veientines. They 
obtained the sanction of the senate for this patriotic en- 
terprise, mustered the whole strength of the house, 306 
fighting men, and marched out under the command of 
Kaeso Fabius, the consul, to carry on the war with Veii, 
at their own risk and expense. They built a fort on the 
river Cremera in the neighbourhood of Veii, and sally- 
ing forth from this place of safety, they ravaged the 
land of the Veientines and kept them in check for two 
years, so that they could not think of carrying the war 



164 Early Rome. ch. xvii. 

across the Tiber. But when, on the anniversary of a 
solemn festival of their family, the Fabii proceeded in 
peaceful guise to offer up a sacrifice on the Quirinal 
hill, the Veientines, disregarding the truce of the gods, 
laid an ambush on the road to Rome, fell upon the Fabii 
unawares, and killed them to a man. Thus the whole 
Fabian house would have been extirpated, had not one 
boy been left behind at Rome, on account of his tender 
age, when the men of his house marched out to fight 
the Veientines. This child became the ancestor of the 
Fabii, who served the state for many years as men emi- 
nent in council and in the field. 

The disasters of the Fabii almost proved fatal to 
Rome. The Veientines, following up their success, de- 
feated a Roman army under the consul Menenius, and 
actually effected a lodgment on the hill Janiculus oppo- 
site Rome. They crossed the Tiber and cut off Rome 
from Latium. But the size and natural strength of the 
capital proved the safety of the republic. The Veien- 
tines, unable to carry on a regular siege, were beaten 
off in a series of engagements, driven from the Janiculus, 
and compelled to seek a refuge in their own country. 
The war ended in an armistice for forty years, and Rome 
was thus enabled to direct all her strength against her 
inveterate enemies on the east and south. 

There is no reason to doubt that the legend of the 
Fabii on the Cremera has a foundation in fact. It was 
recorded, probably in the pontifical annals, 
foundation that on their march to that fatal expedition 
of the story. tlie ^5 men went through the right-hand 
arch of the Porta Carmentalis, and this passage was 
for ever after held to be unlucky, and was avoided by 
soldiers leaving the city for the field. But we must of 
course, expect to find the story decked out with fictitious 



ch. xviii. Decemviral Legislation. 165 

ornaments, and disfigured, as is usual in the early 
annals of Rome, by exaggerations and inconsistencies. 
We can discover in it, we think, the spirit of a Fabian 
family chronicler who drew his information from fu- 
neral orations of the Fabian house. It all redounds to 
the glory of this great family. The Fabii wage war 
for the republic on their own account. They number 
306 fighting men, a figure palpably and foolishly ex- 
aggerated. And to make the story more telling, the 
narrator informs us that in this large house there was 
just one child of an age so tender that he could not join 
the expedition, and thus was left behind. It is not ne- 
cessary to point out the physical impossibility of a pro- 
portion of one boy to 306 men. Vagaries of fancy such 
as this we must take into the bargain, and rest thankful 
if the story is not altogether devoid of all elements of 
historical truth. 

The peace or truce concluded between Rome and 
Veii in 474 b. c. seems to have been observed faithfully 
on both sides. We hear of no hostilities between the 
two nations till 438 b. c, when the wars began which 
finally led to the destruction of the Etruscan city in 
396 b. c. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE DECEMVIRS AND THE LAWS OF THE TWELVE 
TABLES. — 451-442 B.C. 

By the establishment of the office of tribunes, 493 B. c, 
the plebeian assembly of tribes acquired the rank and 
weight of a national assembly, inasmuch as 
the officers elected by it were invested with Publilian 

public authority, and were recognized and law - 

submitted to by the patricians no less than the plebe- 



1 66 Early Rome. ch. xvm. 

ians. It seems that in consequence of the extended 
rights thus gained by the comitia of tribes the patricians 
claimed to have votes in them. If they had succeeded 
in this claim, the tribunes would have ceased to be 
magistrates of the plebs alone ; they would have become, 
what the consuls were, viz., magistrates not of a class 
or fraction of the Roman people, but of the whole com- 
munity ; patricians would have become eligible to the 
office, and the great contrast between patricians and 
plebeians would have gradually disappeared. Perhaps 
this would have been salutary in the end. But the ple- 
beians vehemently opposed the admission of patricians 
into their own comitia. They would not allow their 
patrons, the tribunes, to be elected by anybody but 
themselves, and they insisted upon the rigid exclusion of 
patricians from the plebeian assembly. A law was 
passed in 471 B.C., called, after its author, Volero Pub- 
lilius, the Publilian law, to secure the election of the 
plebeian tribunes exclusively to the plebs. 

This law, passed only twenty-two years after the seces- 
sion, did not introduce a new principle but was only de- 
claratory of an established right. By it, moreover, ac- 
cording to some writers, the number of tribunes was 
raised from two to five. 

The tribunes of the people did not long confine them- 
selves to the duties for which they were primarily elected. 
Not satisfied with protecting plebeians from 
cl a rms C if g the unjust treatment of patrician magistrates, 
plebeians. ^ey a [ me ^ at ra ising the inferior citizens to 

an equality with the ruling class in all private and pub- 
lic rights. The times were past when the patricians 
could claim to represent the people of Rome and to 
wield exclusively all political power. It had become 
clear on the occasion of the secession that the patri- 



ch. xviii. Decemviral Legislation. 167 

cians were helpless without the plebeians. The frequent 
wars could not be carried on without the men, who by 
that time undoubtedly formed the greater part of the 
army. The privileges of birth, of presumed sanctity, of 
exclusive political and legal experience, and, above all, 
of prescriptive possession of power, could not outweigh 
the claim which the plebeians now put forth as the great 
bulk of the people and especially of the fighting men. 

The first object of the plebeians, however, was not a 
share of political power, but a more effective legal pro- 
tection than even the new office of tribunes 
had secured for them. They asked for Tertntilian 
two things — first, the removal of all inequali- Rogations. 
ties between themselves and the patricians as far as pri- 
vate rights were concerned ; and, secondly, a codifica- 
tion of the laws thus reformed. This was the object of 
an agitation set on foot by Terentilius Arsa, a tribune of 
the people, in 462 B.C. 

The motion of Terentilius met with a violent opposi- 
tion from those conservative politicians who felt and 
acted as if human institutions ought to be unchangeable, 
like the laws of nature. The contest lasted for ten years. 
The tribunes had as yet no seats in the senate, and were 
therefore unable to advocate their projected reform in 
that assembly. They could only harangue their fellow 
plebeians in. public meetings, called "contiones"; but 
these contiones had not, like the comitia, the power of 
passing laws. The agitation of the tribunes therefore 
resembled that which is exercised in modern times by 
the press or fry public meetings. To obtain the force of 
law, like an act of parliament, the proposals of the tri- 
bunes had to be sanctioned by a majority of the sena- 
tors ; and this was exceedingly difficult to effect at a time 
when the senate consisted as yet entirely of patricians 



1 68 Early Rome. ch. xvm. 

and did not admit the tribunes of the plebs to a seat or 
a vote. There would have been no prospect of final 
success if the senators had to a man resisted the reform. 
But fortunately for Rome the ruling class did not consist 
exclusively of men opposed to all progress. Like the 
English nobility, it seems to have included at all times a 
number of men enlightened enough to see that reforms 
are sometimes demanded by the necessities of national 
life, if not by generosity or justice. Such were the Va- 
lerii, Spurius Cassius, M. Manlius, and, above all, the 

members of the Claudian family— men of a 
fomii Claudian haughty and overbearing spirit, yet ready to 

encounter the hostility of the ruling class for 
the benefit of the greater number and of the state. These 
men had the wisdom to see that Rome had no chance 
of making head against her numerous enemies all 
around, if she was paralyzed by discord and civil strife 
at home. They counselled conciliation, which had been 
found effective on the occasion of the secession thirty 
years before ; and it was owing to their exertions, no 

doubt, that several concessions were made 
to°"he SS iebs to ^ e ple De i ans > such as the increase of the 

number of tribunes from five to ten, the 
limitation of the fines which magistrates should be al- 
lowed to inflict, and a change in the tenure of land on 
the Aventine hill in favour of the plebs (the, law of Ici- 
lius "de Aventino publicando "), the exact nature of 
which we are unfortunately unable to understand. 

Yet these concessions, if they were intended to make 
the plebeians forego the desire of the reform of Teren- 
tilius, proved of no effect. Year after year the demand 
for law reform was repeated ; and at last, after a struggle, 
protracted through ten years, the government, i. e. the 
senate, in the name of the patrician body, consented. It 



ch. xviii. Decemviral Legislation. 169 

was agreed that the existing forms of government should 
be suspended ; that in the place of the patrician consuls 
and the plebeian tribunes ten men, *' decem- 
virs," should be elected indiscriminately Election of 

J decemvirs. 

from the two orders of citizens, empowered 
to carry on the regular government, and at the same 
time to reform the existing law, and to equalize the pri- 
vate rights of plebeians and patricians ; finally, in order 
to prevent any ambiguity, and to put an end to the un- 
certainty inseparable from unwritten laws, it was resolved 
that the laws should be written down and made known 
to the public. 

The laws of the Twelve Tables, drawn up in conse- 
quence of this resolution, continued in force for many- 
ages, and even in Cicero's time formed part m , 

r The laws of 

of the elementary school teaching of Roman the Twelve 
boys. Unfortunately, only fragments of them 
have come down to us. Yet these fragments are of in- 
valuable service in the study of Roman life and man- 
ners. The documentary history of Rome may be said 
to begin with these laws. 

The time of legendary stories and of mere tradition 
is past. Nevertheless when we read the account given 
by Livy of the transactions which led to the 
legislation of the decemvirs and especially o/the^n- 68 
of those which caused their overthrow, we nalistic 

accounts. 

feel the greatest disappointment and irrita- 
tion ; for instead of a plain, unvarnished tale we find 
statements so contradictory, unintelligible, and incredible 
that we cannot possibly accept them as they are, 
although we have not sufficient external evidence to sift 
and to correct them. We can only hope to test them by 
general arguments and by applying to them the laws of 
historical probability, availing ourselves at the same 



170 Early Rome. CH. xvm. 

time of some features of the story, which we have a 
right to look upon as remnants of a trustworthy tra- 
dition. 

Before the decemvirs entered on their office, it was 

determined, as Livy informs us, to send an embassy to 

Athens for the purpose of studying the cele- 

Embassy to brated laws of Solon, that the Roman legis- 

Athens. . & 

lators might be able to form their laws 
after that great model. The names of the three ambas- 
sadors are given by Livy, as well as that of a Greek 
philosopher who accompanied them and assisted them 
in their task. Upon their return they made their report, 
and the services of the Greek philosopher were rated so 
high that a statue was erected in his honour in the 
Roman Forum. 

In spite of the apparent evidence which may seem to 
be contained in the erection of this statue, we can have 
no hesitation in declaring the whole story of the Greek 
embassy a fiction, for the following reasons : 

No nation of antiquity ever dreamt of forming its 
civil law after a foreign model. Least of all would the 
Romans have done so, who, if they were original in 
anything, were original in their system of civil law 
and distinguished by their contempt for foreign institu- 
tions. 

If this were not so, we should be able to discover some 
such resemblance between the Solonian and Roman 
laws as would be evidence of the derivation of the latter 
from the former. No such resemblance exists. Nor is 
it possible to conceive that Roman ambassadors could 
have gone to Athens to study the laws of Solon, for at 
Reasons for ^ e tnTie °f tne decemvirs these laws were 
rejecting no longer in force, but had been supplanted 

this story. , , , .... „_-... 

by the democratic institutions of Kleisthenes. 



ch. xviii. Decemviral Legislation. 171 



Apart from the reasons just urged, the Romans at 
the period of the decemvirs, in the middle of the fifth 
century before Christ, if they had ever heard the name 
of Solon or of Athens, were probably very far from such 
a general acquaintance with Greece as is implied by a 
resolution to take Greek models for their own national 
legislation. We cannot do better than sum up these 
doubts in the words of Gibbon : " From a motive of 
national pride both Livy and Dionysius are willing to 
believe that the deputies of Rome visited Athens under 
the wise and splendid administration of Pericles, and 
the laws of Solon were transfused into the Twelve 
Tables. If such an embassy had indeed been received 
from the barbarians of Hesperia, the Roman name 
would have been familiar to the Greeks before the 
reign of Alexander, and the faintest evidence would 
have been explored and celebrated by the curiosity of 
succeeding times. But the Athenian monuments are 
silent ; nor will it seem credible that the patricians 
should undertake a long and perilous navigation to 
copy the purest model of a democracy. In the compa- 
rison of the tables of Solon with those of the decemvirs 
some casual resemblance may be found — some rules 
which nature and reason have revealed to every society. 
But in all the great lines of public and private jurispru- 
dence the legislator? of Rome and Athens appear to be 
strangers or adverse to each other." 

Having disposed of the story of the Athenian embassy, 
we proceed to examine the narrative of the decemviral 
legislation. 

In 451 B.C. the elections of decemvirs took The tradi - 

, 1 1 1 • 1 r tional story 

place, and resulted in the return of ten pa- of the de- 
tricians. The plebeians being left without cemvirs - 
their tribunes had to submit to this violation of the recent 



172 Early Rome. ch. xvni. 

agreement, which stipulated for a mixed commission. 
However, the patrician decemvirs discharged their duties 
honestly and almost completed their task, so that before 
the end of the year ten tables of the laws were drawn 
up and approved by the people. 

As some laws were still wanting to complete the code, 
it was resolved that decemvirs should again be elected 
for the following year. Then Appius Claudius, who had 
been the leading man in the first year's commission, and 
who was looked upon as the champion of the aristocratic 
party, suddenly assumed, it is said, the character of a 
friend of the people, and secured not only his own re- 
election but also the election of several plebeians upon 
the new commission. However, when he and his col- 
leagues were installed in office they showed that they 
were the friends neither of the patricians nor of the ple- 
beians, for they treated both with equal violence. They 
appeared in public, preceded by a body of 120 lictors, and 
these lictors carried not only the rods, but also the axes, 
the emblems of dictatorial power. All freedom was sup- 
pressed ; no class of citizens was spared. Not only were 
the plebeians trampled under foot, but the most eminent 
of the patricians were put to death or driven into banish- 
ment. Rome was like a city taken by storm and sacked 
by a victorious enemy. 

Thus the year of the second decemvirate passed by, 
and yet the two tables which were wanted to complete 
the legislation were not submitted to the people for ap- 
probation. The decemvirs refused to lay down their 
office, protesting that they would first pass the laws which 
they were appointed to draw up. The senate in vain 
urged them to retire ; the people became discontented, 
the army mutinous ; yet the decemvirs clung to their 
office, thus violating the fundamental law of the republic, 



CH. xviii. Decemviral Legislation. 173 

which required every magistrate to resign at the expira- 
tion of the period for which he was elected. 

The general disaffection was brought to a crisis by an 
outrage committed on female chastity by Appius Clau- 
dius himself. In the blindness of his passion for a 
beautiful girl, the daughter of Virgipius, a brave ple- 
beian centurion, he instigated one of his clients to claim 
her as his slave, under the pretext that she was the 
daughter of a slave woman belonging to him. The girl 
was brought before the judgment seat of Appius, and he, 
contrary to a clear provision of the law sanctioned by 
himself, decided that pending the investigation she 
should be considered not as a free woman, but as a 
slave, and handed over to the keeping of the claimant. 
With difficulty the friends of Virginia obtained a respite 
for her, until her father should appear, to produce the 
evidence in favour of his daughter's legitimate birth. 
On the following day the case was proceeded with ; and 
when Virginius saw that all his arguments and entreaties 
were of no avail to save his child from shame, he stabbed 
her to death with his own hand. 

This deed was the signal for a general insurrection. 
The people, a second time in arms, seceded to the Sacred 
Mount, threatening to abandon Rome and to form a 
separate community. The senate and the patricians, 
left behind in Rome, at last compelled the decemvirs to 
resign, and then restored the consular government. 
Thus they induced the commons to return after the re- 
enactment of the sacred laws and the re-establishment 
of the tribuneship. The decemvirs were punished with 
exile. Appius Claudius, reserved in prison for a severer 
punishment, put an end to his own life. 

Thus runs the wonderful story of the downfall of the 
decemvirs. It is hardly necessary to say that it cannot 

N 



174 Early Rome. ch. xvm. 

be true. The sudden change in the char- 
Criticism of acter of Appius Claudius, however strange, 

the story. rr ° 

is perhaps possible ; but what shall we think 
of the policy ascribed to the decemvirs, which was hos- 
tile to both parties in the state at once, and seems to 
have rested on no support save that of their 120 lictors ? 
Surely the Roman plebs, united in common interests 
with the patricians, were not obliged to have recourse to 
such a violent measure as a secession in order to get rid 
of a few magistrates. That secession of the plebs, which 
is undoubtedly historical, can have been directed only 
against the patricians as a body, and its object must 
have been to protect plebeian rights endangered by the 
patricians. Now, as we are informed that after the 
secession the office of tribunes was restored along with 
all the rights granted at the first secession, it seems a 
natural conclusion that the patricians had intended 
altogether to suppress the tribuneship, which had only 
been suspended during the decemvirate. Perhaps the 
patricians argued that now, after the decemviral legisla- 
tion, the plebeian tribunes were no longer wanted, as the 
law itself would henceforth protect the plebeians. But 
the plebeians insisted on the restoration of the sacred 
laws, and they obtained it. 

A strong argument for the view we have taken of the 
second secession lies in the character of the laws, con- 
tained in the last two tables. These laws 
the e iasr S two are universally described as unjust to the 
tables. plebeians, and they contained the prohibi- 

tion of marriages between the two orders of citizens, a 
prohibition which was really a badge of servitude and 
a remnant of the old inequality of patricians and plebe- 
ians. It ought not to have been received into the new 
code and could not have been sanctioned, as is alleged, 



ch. xviii. Decemviral Legislation. 175 

by men who, like Appius Claudius and the second de- 
cemvirs, favoured the plebeians. On the other hand, 
the patricians, who made peace with the plebeians, did 
not repeal this obnoxious law. If they had been the 
real friends of the people, they could not have shown 
this in a more signal manner than by condemning a law 
so unpopular. As they did not do so, we may infer that 
they intentionally upheld that law ; and we are only 
going one step further if we surmise that they introduced 
it into the code in opposition to the policy of Appius 
Claudius. This conclusion is confirmed by a statement 
of Diodoms, who says that the last two tables of laws 
were added by the consuls Valerius and Horatius, who 
succeeded the decemvirs. 

The result of these considerations is that in all proba- 
bility the second decemvirs were opposed to the policy 
of the extreme patrician party, that they in- 
tended to carry out that equalization of the Probabl e 

J ^ causes of the 

laws which was the object of the Terentilian overthrow of 
Rogation ; that in this endeavour they were 
thwarted by the senate, which compelled them to resign 
before the last two tables were sanctioned ; that the 
senate then embodied in the last two tables those old 
prohibitions of intermarriage between patricians and 
plebeians which were so offensive to the latter, and tried 
to restore the old consular government without the tri- 
buneship of the people ; that thereupon the plebeians 
had recourse to a secession, and did not return until the 
sacred laws and the tribuneship had been restored to 
them. All the stories of violence and cruelty ascribed 
to the decemvirs must be regarded as fictitious and as 
invented from the same motive of blackening the char- 
acter of popular leaders, to which are to be ascribed sim- 
ilar charges brought against Spurius Cassius, Marcus 
Manlius, and even Caius Gracchus. 



176 Early Rome. ch. xix. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

EXTENSION OF PLEBEIAN RIGHTS FROM 449 TO 39O B.C. 

The laws of the Twelve Tables were not intended to be 
a reform of the constitution. They referred to the pri- 
vate rights of the citizens alone, especially 
thTdecem- to the civil law. The constitution of the 
tionon pub-" republic was not touched by them, and was 
lie and pri- left entirely what it had been before. But 

vate laws. . . . 

the violent commotions which accompanied 
the downfall of the decemviral legislators, and which at 
one time threatened a dissolution of the commonwealth, 
involved a formal restoration of the old order of things, 
which was accompanied by a few slight modifications 
and new legal guarantees. 

In the first place the annual consulship was re-esta- 
blished. But the functions of treasurer or paymaster 
» (quaestor), which had hitherto been dis- 

Qusestors \n /» 

elected by charged by a nominee of the consul, were 

e peop e. nQw en ^ rus t e d to an annual officer, elected 
by popular suffrage. By this means a check was im- 
posed on the disposal of the public money by the consul. 
The quaestor, though still acting under the authority of 
the consul, and looked upon as his subordinate, had to 
superintend the military expenditure and to account for 
the disposal of booty taken in war. He had to lay his 
accounts before the senate, the body which had the 
chief control of the public finances. 

The consulship was restored subject to the old restric- 
tions. The right of appeal from the consul's decisions 
Right of ap- t0 tne popular assembly was guaranteed by 
Jnd extended 4 a s P ecial enactment, which provided that 
no magistrate whatever should be elected 



ch. xix. Extension of Plebeian Rights. 17 7 

unrestrained by this safeguard of popular liberty. As 
by the decemviral legislation the private rights of the 
plebeians and patricians had been equalized, the right 
of appeal was now probably extended to the plebeians. 
The tribuneship and sedileship were also restored, with 
their privilege of inviolability and the right of interces- 
sion. Special precautions were taken to 
secure the uninterrupted succession of tri- ^J^j^" of 
bunes, so that the people might never be in shi P an d 

r . . , , aedileship. 

want of their legal protectors. 

Finally, a law passed by the consuls Valerius and 
Horatius acknowledged the plebeian assembly of tribes 
as a sovereign assembly of the Roman peo- 
ple. It laid down the rule " that the whole Sovereignty of 

r the assembly 

Roman people should be legally bound by of tribe? ac- 
the decisions of the tribes." Whether this 
important law was an enactment entirely new in sub- 
stance, or only for the formal acknowledgment of an 
existing plebeian right, and as such a part of the general 
restoration of the old constitution, we are not informed. 
The latter, however, seems the most probable hypothesis, 
for in reality the plebeians must have been acknowledged 
as possessing the right of " legally binding the whole 
Roman people" by their decisions from the moment 
when the tribunes elected by them were invested with 
a public authority, to which the consuls themselves had 
to bow. The legislative sovereignty of the plebeian 
tribes was now extended more and more. It superseded 
gradually the legislation of the older comitia centuriata, 
which preserved only their rights of electing the consuls 
and (afterwards) the praetors and censors, the right of 
deciding on peace and war, and the supreme criminal 
legislation in cases of appeal. 

The assembly of tribes, on the other hand, became 



178 Early Rome. ch. xix. 

now the only engine for legislative enactments, and 
was even empowered to elect those inferior 
E f X the S ie n is- magistrates who were subsequently ap- 
lativeand pointed, such as quaestors and sediles. 

functions of Again, questions of foreign as well as do- 
bly of tribes, mestic policy were henceforth submitted to 
the decision of the plebeian assembly of 
tribes ; so that the centre of gravity which had origi- 
nally lain in the patrician assembly of curies, and then 
in the mixed assembly of centuries, was finally shifted 
entirely to the plebeian comitia of tribes. 

But this change was not effected at once. It was the 
slow result of a gradual abolition of all political privi- 
leges attaching to the patrician body. When 
Gradual ^ ^ consmar constitution was restored, 

abolition 01 

patrician a f ter th e decemvirate, these privileges still 

privileges. . 

existed entire, though the time was come 
when they were destined to fall one after another. 

First of all, the law against intermarriage between 
the two classes of citizens was abolished on the motion 

of a tribune of the people, called C. Canu- 
Canuleian leius (445 B. c). This law, which seems to 

intermar- e have caused so much heartburning and to 
pafricians have been a bone* of contention in the sec- 
and pie- on( j y ear f fa e decemvirate, was really no 

advantage to the patricians, but on the 
contrary a cause of weakness, as it prevented the aris- 
tocracy from gaining strength by the infusion of new 
blood. It can have been nothing but a narrow-minded 
religious scruple which opposed mixed marriages, un- 
der the impression that only a certain number of fam- 
lies enjoyed that special favour of the gods which 
secured divine protection to the state administered by 
them; that they alone could approach the gods by 



ch. xix. Extension of Plebeian Rights. 179 

augury, and " possess the aitsfticia " — be, as it were, the 
mediators between gods and men, a priesthood by- 
birth, propagated only by purity of blood and inter- 
marriage among themselves alone. How much these 
religious scruples were affected and supported by self- 
interest, we have no external evidence to decide. But 
it is not at all improbable that they were strengthened 
by the fact that political power and material advantages 
were bound up with the exclusive religious sanctity 
claimed by the patrician houses. 

This exclusive possession of political power by the 
patricians was the tower of strength against which the 
plebeians henceforth directed their attacks. Hitherto, 
as we have seen, they had only claimed equality of pri- 
vate rights and protection from wrong. They had 
obtained the latter in their tribunes, and the former in 
the decemviral legislation, to which the Canuleian law 
of marriage must be looked upon as an appendix. In 
the very same year (445 B. c.) the tribunes 
brought in a bill to sanction the election of f f a^hare 
plebeian consuls. The patricians resisted JjJ eewcn " 
with all their might, but they were only 
able to alter the form and not the substance of the pro- 
posal. They objected to plebeian consuls, but con- 
sented to the election of chief magistrates _ _ . 

The office of 

" with consular power," to be called " mili- military tri- 
tary tribunes," three in number, &nd eligi- consular 
ble promiscuously from the two orders of P ower - 
citizens. What they proposed to gain, or did gain, by 
this change in the title is not quite clear. They cannot 
have been so childish as to fight a political battle for a 
mere name. It is probable that the military tribunes 
were considered as, in rank, inferior to the consuls, and 
that they lacked some of the attributes and rights which 



180 Early Rome. ch. xix. 

the consuls possessed. At the same time, the increase 
in the number of chief magistrates implies that one of 
the three was intended to discharge the duties of chief 
judge, for which afterwards a praetor was -elected, and 
that the patricians reserved to themselves the right of 
filling this office with one of their own number. The 
other two military tribunes, whose principal duty was 
the command of the army, were to be elected indiscrim- 
inately from patricians and plebeians, and the impor- 
tant reservation was made that the government of the 
republic should be entrusted to consuls whenever the 
senate should deem it advisable. The consuls of course 
could be taken from the patrician body alone, and it 
was therefore left to the decision of the senate whether 
the new law was to be applied or not. 

Even with these restrictions and modifications the 
apparent gain of the plebeians was very important. But 
unfortunately for them their opponents did not act with 
good faith and succeeded in making their concessions 
almost nugatory. 

As the law now stood, the policy of the patricians was 

directed to two points ; first, to obtain a decree of the 

senate for the election of consuls, and if 

the'pLri- tnis could not be carried, to make such good 

dans to use f t ne i r influence in the comitia of cen- 

make the , 

laws nuga- turies as to secure the election of patricians 
for the office of military tribunes, to the ex- 
clusion of plebeians. 

For a considerable time the patricians were entirely 
successful. During the period between 444 b. c. and 409 
B. c. — that is, for thirty-five years — they managed to pre- 
vent the election of military tribunes and to substitute 
consuls no less than twenty times ; and up to the year 
400 b. c. i. e. for twenty-three years — in which they were 



CH. xix. Extoision of Plebeian Rights. 181 

compelled to yield to the demands of the plebeians and 
to allow the election of military tribunes instead of con- 
suls, they frustrated the success of plebeian candidates. 
For nearly half a century therefore— i. e. from 445 to 400 
— the victory which the plebeians had gained turned out 
to be really barren of results. Whether consuls or 
military tribunes directed the government, they were 
always taken from the patrician order, although the law 
sanctioned the election of plebeians at least for one of 
these offices. 

The explanation of this curious circumstance seems 
at first sight very difficult. How could the plebeians rest 
satisfied with an apparent victory, with a 
mere change in the law, without following tiono^his 
it up practically by enforcing the law ? If wolt. 
they were strong enough to compel their opponents to 
surrender a privilege after a stubborn contest, could they 
lack the strength to appropriate the spoils ? The truth 
seems to be, that a reaction took place after the great 
constitutional struggle in the time of the decemvirate, 
and that the equalization and codification of the law 
which were effected at that period removed many of the 
grievances of the plebeian body. Moreover, the party 
in possession of the government, with all the influence 
of nobility, wealth, political experience and organization, 
was not easily beaten at elections if it chose to exert the 
whole of its power. This the Roman patricians were 
determined to do. In the senate they were all-powerful; 
in fact, the senate was as yet unpolluted by plebeian 
members. In the comitia centuriata they must have 
possessed a working majority either by their own votes 
or by the votes of their dependents and adherents. If 
these could not be trusted, the patricians had it in their 
power to influence the elections through a presiding 



1 82 Early Rome. ch. xix. 

magistrate of their own order, who might refuse to ac- 
cept votes for an opposition candidate, or might adjourn 
the election, if he feared it would go against his party. 
He might even refuse to declare a plebeian duly elected, 
on the pretext of some irregularity. The auspices might 
be made use of as a political weapon ; the gods might 
declare, through the mouth of a patrician augur, that 
they were not satisfied with the result of an election ; 
the senate might withhold the " patrum auctoritas ; '' or, 
finally, the patrician comitia curiata might object to con- 
fer upon a plebeian magistrate the " imperium," without 
which he could not lawfully take the command of the 
army. Such a copious store of political weapons ex- 
plains sufficiently the continued ascendency of the patri- 
cian body, in spite of the temporary success gained by 
the plebeians at a time of great political excitement. 

Nevertheless, there are indications of very severe 
struggles during this period. It seems that the patri- 
cians did not scruple to resort to violent measures when 
opposed by plebeian candidates of more than average 
ability or determination. On such occasions they did 
not shrink even from murder, as we learn from the fate 
of Spurius Maelius. 

Ten years after the decemvirate (439 b. c.) dearth and 
famine desolated the land. The people suffered griev- 
ously, though a special commissioner of 
Spurius markets {pr&fectus annoncz) was appointed 

to buy up corn for the supply of the people. 
In this emergency Spurius Maslius, a rich plebeian, came 
forward as a benefactor of the poor, distributed corn 
gratis, or at very low prices, and made himself so popu- 
lar that the people appeared inclined to raise him to the 
consulship if he desired that honour. The patricians 
suspected him of even greater ambition ; at least they 



ch. xix. Extension of Plebeian Rights. 183 

pretended to fear that he was planning the overthrow 
of the republic and the establishment of a monarchy. 
Upon information given by the commissioner of mar- 
kets, that secret meetings were held at the house of 
Mselius, and that arms were being collected, a dictator 
was appointed, as in times of imminent danger, to save 
the republic. Cincinnatus, the conqueror of the Aequi- 
ans, was the man selected. He set up his tribunal in 
the Forum, and sent Servilius Ahala, his master of the 
horse, to summon Mselius before him. Maelius, foresee- 
ing the danger which threatened him, implored the pro- 
tection of the people, whereupon Ahala drew a dagger 
and stabbed him to death, and Cincinnatus, as dictator, 
justified the deed. The people were terrified and cowed 
for the moment, but they soon recovered confidence, and 
Servilius Ahala was driven into exile and his property 
confiscated. 

The violent proceeding against such a popular man as 
Spurius Mselius was perhaps not isolated. It shows that 
party spirit ran high in Rome at this time, and that the 
patricians were still strong enough to thwart the endea- 
vours of the plebeians and to keep them out of offices 
which they had a legal right to hold. 

Meanwhile, an important modification was made in 
the organization of the government by the The censor . 
creation of the censorship in 443 b. c. sh5 P- 

From the first establishment of the comitia centuriata 
it had been necessary to classify the citizens of Rome 
according to their property. The assessments necessary 
for this purpose were made by the chief magistrates 
from time to time, as necessity or expediency seemed to 
require. It is probable that these duties were imper- 
fectly discharged by the consuls, who had so much other 
work on hand, and that the census, which ought to have 



1 84 Early Rome. ch. xix. 

taken place at regular periods was often postponed under 
the pressure of war or internal disputes. It was but 
natural that with an increasing tendency to organize the 
different branches of the administration as separate 
magistracies, the duties of the censorship should at last 
be assigned to an officer elected for that special purpose, 
just as the quaestorship and afterwards the prsetorship 
were established as distinct from the consulship. The 
establishment of the censorship in 443 b. c. is only one 
feature of that general tendency to multiply magistracies 
by which the simplicity of the original republic was ex- 
panded into the elaborate organization of a more ad- 
vanced period. Why the year 443 was chosen for the 
creation of the censorship is not recorded ; but probably 
we shall not err if we look upon the reform as a result of 
the changes consequent upon the decemviral legislation, 
and, in particular, of the law which substituted military 
tribunes, eligible from patricians and plebeians alike, foi 
the original patrician consuls. The patricians naturally 
wished to keep the management of public affairs as 
much as possible in their own hands, and they reserved 
to their own order the eligibility to the new office of 
censor. They succeeded in keeping exclusive posses- 
sion of it for nearly 100 years. In 351 b. c. the first ple- 
beian censor was elected, and not until 339 b. c. was a 
formal law passed to secure the regular election of one 
plebeian to the office. 

In creating the new office of censors the Romans fol- 
lowed the practice established for the consuls and 
quaestors, of electing not one, but two magistrates to act 
as colleagues. The motive must have been as in the 
^ . F older cases — the wish to allow one censor. 

Duration of 

the office of by his intercession, to control the action of 
the other, a motive amply justified by expe- 



ch. xix. Extension of Plebeian Rights. 185 

rience. As a census could not be taken every year, the 
censorship differed from the other republican offices in 
point of duration. It was made to extend over five years ; 
the intention being that once in that period, which, from 
the religious ceremony of lustration (z. e. purification) of 
the people, the Romans called a lustrum, a new valuation 
of property should take place, and that every Roman 
citizen should have the place assigned according to which 
he had to vote and to contribute to the burdens of the state. 
The lists of citizens drawn up by the censors thus be- 
came the authentic registers recognized by the state. 
No man could claim the rights of a Roman 
citizen whose name was not on • their lists, th g power 
and the constitutional privileges possessed ?f the censors 

r ° r in drawing up 

by Roman magistrates were such that on thelistofciu- 

1 r 1 1 zens. 

the occasion of the census the censors, act- 
ing with a discretion almost despotic, were allowed to 
transfer citizens to other classes or tribes, or even to ex- 
clude them altogether, and to admit freedmen to the 
rank of citizens, — in fact, to remodel the community, to 
alter even the principles on which the census was based, 
and thus to adapt the old institutions to the varying con- 
ditions of the times. It was natural that the original 
sums fixed as the census of different classes should not 
remain a correct standard for a long period, and that 
the mode of assessment had to be modified as the habits 
of life and the views held on the value of personal or 
real property were changed. Thus, the censors were, in 
point of fact, the agents for periodical reforms, and pre- 
vented the necessity of a sweeping reform bill — such as 
that which was passed in England in 1832 to reconcile 
the principle of representation which suited the fifteenth 
century to the altered economical and social conditions 
of the nineteenth. 



1 86 Early Rome. ch. xix. 

But the censors were not confined to drawing up the 
lists of private citizens alone. A duty, if not more im- 
portant, certainly more calculated to give them weight 
with the nobility, was the periodical renewal 
Nomination f t h e se nate. The members of that body, 

of senators. . , . , 

as we have seen, were not elected by the 
people, like those of the House of Commons, nor were 
they hereditary, like those of the House of Lords ; they 
were nominated by the executive, i. e. y by the kings in 
that early period which we call regal, and by the con- 
suls after the establishment of the republic. Upon the 
establishment of the censorship this nomination was 
made to devolve on the censors. They had to draw up 
a list of the senators, and it was left to their discretion 
to add new members in the place of those deceased, 
and also to strike out the names of men whom they 
considered unworthy of the great honour and responsi- 
bility of a seat in that august assembly. As a rule the 
senators were nominated for life ; but the law, by 
sanctioning a periodical revision of the senatorial list, 
enabled the censors to exclude men notoriously un- 
worthy. If this important duty had been exercised in a 
reckless party spirit, so that the censors had ejected the 
members of what we should call the Opposition, the 
Roman senate would inevitably have lost that charac- 
ter of a fixed and settled institution which enabled it 
in the good old times to control all parties and to direct 
the public policy with a view only to the national inter- 
est. Every election of censors would have become a 
test of the strength of parties, and the victorious party 
would each time have excluded its opponents from a 
share in the government. A periodical oscillation 
would have been the result in the policy of Rome, such 
as we are accustomed to see in modern constitu- 



ch. xix. Extension of Plebeian Rights. 187 

tional governments. But the evils of such an oscillation 
would have been much greater in Rome than they are 
in a state where the crown represents the permanent 
national interests, which are above the interests of con- 
flicting parties. 

Besides the general list of Roman citizens and the 
list of senators, the censors had to draw up a list of the 
knights. The centuries of knights formed 
a part of that organization known as the thVcen" 
constitution of centuries, generally attri- ^night^f 
buted to Servius Tullius. Originally, the 
centuries of knights or horsemen, eighteen in number, 
were intended to contain the young men fit for cavalry 
service in the army, and the cavalry of the legions con- 
tinued to be made up chiefly of the men thus selected 
by the censors. But as the assembly of the centuries 
gradually lost its military character and became a 
purely political body, the centuries of knights assumed 
more and more the character of a select body of citi- 
zens, distinct from the great mass by wealth and con- 
nection. Knighthood began to be looked upon as a 
preliminary stage to the senatorial rank and as consti- 
tuting an intermediate class. It comprised the young 
men of the noble houses, though, as far as we know, no 
property qualification was exacted for membership be- 
fore the time of the Gracchi. Tt was more and more 
considered an honour to belong to the centuries of 
knights; and as they counted eighteen votes in the 
centuriate assembly, and also enjoyed the right of vo- 
ting before the others, they possessed great influence. 
Hence, older men who had served their time in the 
army, and even senators, found it desirable to retain their 
votes in the centuries of knights, and the censorial discre- 
tion in drawing up these lists was one of great importance. 



1 88 Early Rome. ch. xix. 

From the exercise of these rights the censors acquired 
in course of time a power much coveted and highly 
valued — the power of sitting in judgment 
ship o f ensor " on the civic virtue of all Roman citizens, of 
morals. punishing misconduct by exclusion from 

public rights and honours. They acquired what was 
called the ce7isura moriwi, the censorship of morals, 
which supplied a defect in the code of laws, and in that 
code of public decency and social propriety which in 
our own time is successfully enforced by public opinion, 
aided by the press. As the full exercise of this moral 
judicature of the censors belongs to a later period, we 
need not here dwell upon it any longer. 

In the censorial functions of classifying the citizens 

according to their property was contained the germ of 

. . , their financial duties. They obtained in 

Financial du- 

ties of the course of time the control of the public in- 
come and expenditure, especially with re- 
gard to the revenue from domain lands and to the out- 
lay on public works. The full development of these 
financial duties, however, belongs to a later period. 

When the censorship had been tried for two lustral 

periods it was found necessary, in 434 B.C., to modify 

the tenure of office and to limit its duration 

Limitation of to one year an j a half; but probably the 

the censorship J . 

to eighteen motive for this change was not the wish to 

months. ,..,,., n . . » 

limit the legitimate power and authority of 
the office. It is quite evident that such a process as a 
census ought always to be accomplished in the shortest 
possible period. If the censors took full five years be- 
fore they completed their lists of citizens, knights, and 
senators, and assessed the property of each, they not 
only held the whole community in suspense for all this 
long period and thereby produced a feeling of insecurity, 



ch. xix. Extension of Plebeian Rights. 189 

but they ran the risk of publishing statistical data not in 
accordance with actual facts. 

In the year 421 B.C. the principle of multiplying the 
number of chief magistrates, in the interest of the pub- 
lic service and in that of the plebeians, re- _ 

1 r ■> -ii • 11 , ,. Doubling of 

ceived a further illustration by the doubling the number of 
of the number of quaestors. It was arranged quaestors - 
that both patricians and plebeians should be eligible. No 
doubt the patricians expected to get their own candidates 
elected as regularly for this office as for the military tri- 
buneship. But in this expectation they were deceived. 
The election took place, not like that of military tribunes 
and consuls in the assembly of centuries, but in that of 
tribes, and in these the patricians had not the same in- 
fluence as in the other assembly. Consequently we find 
that as early as 410 b. c. three qusestors out of four 
were plebeians. 

This was the first triumph of the plebeians. Soon af- 
ter (in 400, 399, and 396 b. c.) they carried the election 
of several plebeian military tribunes, and 
thus for the first time realized the privilege P lebei f ns , 

r & elected to the 

which they had won about half a century office of miii- 
before. They never again lost the ground ary 
thus gained, and in less than ten years more (388 B. C.) 
they reached at last the long-desired end of political 
equality, by the Licinian laws, which gave them a share 
in the consulship. However, before this great constitu- 
tional change took place, the commonwealth of Rome 
passed through a series of dangers from foreign enemies, 
which, more than any internal disturbances, threaienea 
it with dissolution. 

o 



190 Early Rome. ch. xx. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE FOREIGN RELATIONS OF ROME DOWN TO THE 
CONQUEST OF VEIL 

While, in the constitutional struggles of the people of 
Rome, political rights were more and more equally dis- 
tributed among all her citizens, while the 

The position ° . '. 

of Rome in republic was being consolidated, and the 
administration improved and developed 
through a succession of reforms, the relations of Rome 
with her neighbours remained substantially unaltered, 
and her influence in Italy was not perceptibly increased. 
She continued to be one of the Latin cities — the largest 
of them, it is true, and the most powerful — but still her 
voice was probably never heard beyond the confines of 
Latium and the territories of her immediate neighbours. 
All her energies were required to maintain the ground 
she already occupied, and to ward off the hereditary 
enemies who year after year assailed her and her allies, 
and sometimes succeeded in penetrating to her very 
walls. 

The league with the Latins and Hernicans sub- 
sisted in form and substance, though the allies of Rome 
were no longer the unbroken people they 
Condition of h a( } been when the league was concluded. 

Latium. . . _,.,.. 

Some of the Latin cities, such as Conoli, lay 
in ruins ; others had fallen into the hands of the Volsci- 
ans. Tusculum was kept in a state of almost perpetual 
alarm by the Aequians, who had established a footing 
on Mount Algidus, one of the spurs of the Alban 
Mount, overlooking the plain of Latium. Prasneste, 
probably the strongest Latin town after Rome, had be- 



ch. xx. Foreign Relations. 191 

come virtually an independent town and detached from 
the league. It is clear that this league was in a state of 
gradual dissolution, and that Rome became more iso- 
lated and exposed. 

Fortunately this progress of destruction was arrested. 
In the second half of the fifth century (from 450 to 400 
b. c.) the attacks of the Aequians and Vol- 
scians became by degrees feebler. Whether S eC voi ° f 
it was that their strength was spent, or that scians and 
they themselves were now exposed in their 
rear to the attack of i. fiercer mountain tribe (the Sam- 
nites), Rome and her allies obtained breathing time; 
and as the internal dissensions between patricians and 
plebeians had been to some extent allayed by the de- 
cemviral legislation and the reforms which followed, 
the attention of the republic could be successfully turned 
abroad, and Rome was able to profit by the favourable 
change. 

It was natural that the calamities of war should press 
more heavily on the Latin cities, which surrounded Rome 
like so many outlying bulwarks, than on Rome itself. 
Had the tide of war not been stemmed, Rome would in 
the end have been swept away herself, but now she ac- 
tually profited by the losses of her allies ; for her pre- 
ponderance increased so greatly that she 
became in fact the head and mistress of increased 

preponder- 

those who had previously been in reality anceof 
and still were in name her allies on equal 
terms. It does not seem that Rome made a very gen- 
erous use of this altered position. At least, if we can 
judge of her general policy from an isolated instance, 
we shall not be inclined to rate the public morality of 
Rome very high. The city of Corioli was one of those 
ancient members of the league which had been utterly 



192 Early Rome. ch. xx. 

destroyed in the Volscian wars. The land which had 
formed the territory of Corioli lay between the two cities 
of Ardea and Aricia, and these cities wran- 
Acquisition g\ e( ^ an( j ac tually fought for the possession 
tory of of the deserted land. At last (in 446 B. c.) 

Conph. they applied t0 R ome to sett i e t he dispute, 

and the result was that Rome claimed and occupied the 
disputed land for herself. This was not a very honour- 
able transaction, and the Roman historians themselves, 
who report it, seem heartily ashamed of it. Livy does 
not hesitate to call it a monument of public shame. It 
shows what Rome could now venture to do ; and it is 
interesting to note that this acquisition of the territory 
of Corioli was the first extension of the Roman domin- 
ions, after the establishment of the republic, of which we 
know. It was the iniquitous beginning of a national 
policy which throughout retained the same character of 
rapacity and bad faith with which it was begun. 

The next acquisitions were made on the eastern side 

of Rome. In 418 b. c. the town of Labici, which had 

been originally Latin and a member of the 

Conquest of ° . 

Labici, Boise, league, but which had been for some time 
towns to* in the hands of the Aequians, was at length 

Latium. retaken. The same success attended the 

Roman arms four years latter (414 b. c), when Boise, 
a town still further east, was taken from the Aequians. 
About the same time the Volscians seem to have lost 
several of the towns which they had previously con- 
quered in Latium, and it is even related that a Roman 
army marched southward right through the land of the 
Volscians, and took the maritime town of Anxur, which 
was afterwards called Terracina. 

Even more significant than these signs of returning 
strength in the wars with their eastern and southern 



CH. xx. Foreign Relations. 193 

foes, the Aequians and Volscians, was the spirit shown 
by the Romans in a conflict which now broke out with 
the Etruscans, and which led, after a severe and pro- 
tracted struggle, to the first great conquest of a large 
fortified town that could rival Rome itself in extent, 
population, and power — the great Etruscan city of Veii. 
Even before the important conquest of Labici had 
been made (418 B.C.) the Romans had succeeded in 
clearing away, on the left bank of the Tiber, 
the last remnant of the old ascendency of Conquest of 

J Fidenae. 

the Etruscans, by the conquest and destruc- 
tion (in 426) of the small town of Fidenae (p. 163). In this 
war, Aulus Cornelius Cossus, the Roman master of the 
horse, slew, it is said, with his own hand Lars Tolum- 
nius, the Veientine king, who had come to the aid of 
Fidenae, and, as was customary in Rome, 
he dedicated the spoils in the temple of T !\ e s P olia 

r r opima of 

Jupiter Feretrius on the Capitol. The spoils Cornelius 

• 1 /~ it Cossus. 

of Lars Tolummus were the first spoha 
opima, i. e. spoils of a hostile commander slain by a 
Roman commander, since Romulus had slain Acron, 
the king of Antemnae. They were still in existence in 
the time of Augustus, whose attention was drawn to 
them when he caused the temple of Jupiter Feretrius to 
be repaired. We are told by Livy that it was Augustus 
himself who informed him that the inscription upon the 
coat-of-arms of Tolumnius designated Cornelius Cossus 
as consul, and not as master of the horse. It appears, 
therefore, that if the said inscription was genuine and 
correctly read, the war with Fidenae must have taken 
place not in 426 B.C., when A. Cornelius Cossus was 
master of the horse, but in 428, when he was consul. 

Whatever we may think of the chronological doubts 
thus created, it is at any rate certain, that about this 



194 Early Rome. ch. xx. 

time Fidenae was taken by the Romans. It seems to 
have been utterly destroyed, and it was never rebuilt, for 
in the age of Horace and Juvenal Fidenae is alluded to 
as the picture of desolation and loneliness. 

The conquest of Fidense was in itself important 
enough, as it delivered Rome from a very troublesome 
neighbour in its immediate vicinity. But it proved only 
the first step to a far more valuable acquisition on the 
side of Etruria. 

At a distance of about ten miles to the north of Rome 
was situated the large and powerful city of Veii, strongly 
fortified by nature and art. Veii was de- 
Th.e cit y of cidedly the leading town in southern Etru- 
ria, and probably occupied a position simi- 
lar to that which Rome held in Latium. She was far 
superior to Rome in wealth and arts, and perhaps not 
inferior in public spirit and military organization. Her 
architects, sculptors, and artizans found employment in 
Rome, and first familiarized the ruder inhabitants of 
Latium with the more refined enjoyments and tastes of 
civilized life. In spite of this peaceful intercourse the 
geographical proximity of the two towns made a hostile 
collision in the long run inevitable, and a serious war 
could end only in the destruction of one of the two, 
since the difference of their nationality and language 
made a peaceful amalgamation difficult or impossible. 

In the war which led to the destruction of Fidenae the 
Veientines, as we have seen, had taken a part. Peace 
was concluded between the two states, and 
between ieS the Veientines seem to have kept quiet 
Rome nd while Rome secured her ascendency in Lati- 

um by the conquest of Labici and Bolae and 
by successful wars with the Volscians. This peace lasted 
till 406 b. c. Of the causes which led to a renewal of 



ch. xx. Foreign Relations. 195 

hostilities we know nothing. It is not unlikely that 
Rome engaged in the war as the ally and protector of 
some of the towns subject to Veii, especially Sutrium 
and Nepete ; for we find that these towns were, after the 
destruction of Veii, the allies of Rome, and it was quite 
consistent with the spirit of Roman policy to interfere 
in the internal disputes of her neighbours and to act 
the popular part of the protector of innocence against 
oppression, i. e. of the weaker against the stronger, pro- 
vided a material advantage could be obtained. 

About the same time the northern towns of Etruria 
were alarmed by the approach of the Gauls, who had 
recently crossed the Alps, invaded the north of Italy, 
and, after having overrun the plain of the Po, gradually 
fought their way southwards to the more genial and fer- 
tile regions of central and southern Italy. 

Owing to this fatal circumstance Veii was left destitute 
of the support of her allies in the north, and being thus 
isolated offered a tempting prize to the cupidity of the 
Romans. 

Whatever may have been the origin and cause of the 
war, the Romans, once engaged in it, carried it on with 
a perseverance and singleness of purpose which they 
had never shown before on such a scale, but which was 
eminently characteristic of their nation. 

Feeling that their military organization was deficient, 
they set about reforming it, and availed themselves of 
the services of a man, who rose at the right 
moment to direct the energies of his country- ta^oTgan- 
men. This man was Marcus Furius Camil- camUlu? 
lus, a hero destined to accomplish the victo- 
ry over the mightiest enemy which Rome had as yet en- 
countered, to be fondly called by his countrymen the 
second founder of Rome, and to close a long and glori- 



196 Early Rome. ch. xx. 

ous life by aiding in the great work of establishing con- 
cord between the hostile ranks of citizens. 

The Roman legions, as we know, did not consist of 

mercenaries, serving for pay, nor of volunteers, induced 

to take arms by their own free patriotic im- 

The Roman pulse. They consisted of citizens, who in 

armies. r J 

defending their country were performing 
the primary and most important civic duty. For the 
discharge of this duty they received no remuneration. 
The burthens connected with it they had themselves to 
pay from their own means. The richer citizens were 
called upon to provide themselves with the more costly 
armour required by the men in the front ranks, and of 
course they had to bear the brunt of battle. As a com- 
pensation for these services, they had a greater number 
of votes in the popular assembly. It was evident that 
with such a military organization the lowest ranks of the 
citizens could not have been called upon to take any 
part in the national defence, or else that their services 
must have been very subordinate. In progress of time the 
military duties were found to press too heavily upon the 
rich, and a more equal distribution was necessary. The 
old division of classes and the old difference of arms were 
modified. The soldiers of the legions were divided 
into two classes only — the heavy armed and the light- 
armed. The arms were furnished by the state, and con- 
sequently the comitia of centuries, which continued to 
be a political body, ceased to be a military organization. 
Up to the Veientine war, however, the soldier received 
no regular pay, and in consequence it was unfair and 
impossible to keep the men for a long time away from 
their domestic pursuits, from their fields and workshops. 
The campaigns could not be extended beyond a few 
weeks or months in summer. No military operations, 



CH. xx. Foreign Relations. 197 

therefore, could be undertaken which required a long 
period of service. On the approach of winter, if not 
before, the men had to be dismissed to their homes, and 
new armies had to be formed on the return of spring. 
Now such a procedure might suit the desultory warfare 
which consisted in making occasional inroads for the 
sake of plunder ; but a serious war with a powerful state, 
especially the siege of a large town, required armies of a 
more permanent character — armies that were not dis- 
banded in the autumn, or disbanded only to be immedi- 
ately replaced by newly-levied forces. To accomplish 
this it was necessary to provide the soldiers with the 
means of bearing the burden of military services, and 
consequently to pay them from the public 

n _;. . r . . , . Introduc- 

treasury. This was done in the last war tionofmili- 
with Veii by the advice of Camillus. It was tary pay ' 
a measure calculated to work a great change in the mili- 
tary system of the Romans, and to exercise a great in- 
fluence also on political affairs and on the state of par- 
ties. It served to equalize the rich and the poor, and it 
acted therefore as a powerful stimulus in bringing to a 
final settlement the long-continued struggle of the patri- 
cians and the plebeians. 

With their newly-organized armies the Romans laid 
siege to the city of Veii and kept it blockaded summer 
and winter. But the fortune of war was variable. More 
than once the Veientines broke through the besieging 
army and carried the war into the vici- 
nity of Rome. We hear of defeats sus- v*S eof 
tained by the Roman legions. The war 
was protracted to the tenth year. At length Furius 
Camillus was appointed dictator, and he soon led the 
legions to victory. 

That Veii was taken by the Romans under Camillus 



I9 8 Early Rome. ch. xx. 

is a fact beyond dispute. But the mode of its conquest 
is hidden in a cloud of fables. We are 
^ptureof 5 told that in the course of the war the Alban 
Veil - lake rose miraculously to such a height 

that it threatened to flood the whole plain of Latium. 
The Romans, looking upon this phenomenon as a 
sign sent from the gods, were informed by an Etrus- 
can soothsayer and also by the Delphian oracle, that 
if they constructed a channel to draw off the water 
of the lake they would obtain possession of the hostile 
town. They immediately set to work, constructed a 
channel in the side of the hilt, and thus permanently 
lowered the level of the lake, making the water at 
the same time available for irrigating the plain below. 
While this work was in progress they continued the 
siege of Veii. Here also they availed themselves of 
tunnelling. Camillus caused an underground passage to 
be constructed from his camp right into the citadel of 
Veii. When this was finished he caused the attention 
of the besieged to be diverted by sham attacks on the 
walls, whilst with a chosen band he penetrated through 
the tunnel into the town and came out in the very temple 
of Juno, the protecting deity of Veii, at the moment 
when the king was in the act of offering up sacrifice, 
and when the priest had just exclaimed that this sacri- 
fice was a pledge of victory. At that auspicious moment 
Camillus, we are told, broke into the temple, snatched 
the offering from the hands of the king, and flung it into 
the fire on the altar. The Romans, issuing from the 
tunnel, fell upon the rear of the Veientines, opened the 
gates, let in their comrades, and obtained possession of 
the town. Veii was taken and sacked. The people 
who did not fall in battle were led away as captives and 
sold as slaves. The victorious army returned laden 



ch. xx. Foreign Relations. 199 

with spoils, and Camillus, mounted on a car drawn by 
white horses, and dressed in the garments of Jupiter, 
celebrated a triumph such as had never been witnessed 
before. 

But a great reverse was in store both for the victorious 
leader and for his people. In vain had Camillus in the 
moment of victory attempted to avert the jealousy of the 
gods by a fervent prayer that, if they thought him guilty 
of overweening pride, they should inflict a merciful pun- 
ishment. Whilst he uttered this prayer he had his head 
veiled, as was customary, and turning round on his feet, 
he stumbled and fell to the grounds This slight mishap 
he fondly hoped had conciliated the gods. But he soon 
found out his error. Instead of gratitude he reaped 
hatred and persecution. He was charged with having 
unjustly appropriated a part of the spoils, with having 
exhibited impious pride and presumption because of the 
pomp displayed in his triumph, and with depriving the 
people of the fruits of their victory, by inducing the 
senate to pass a decree that the tenth part of all the 
spoils should be dedicated as an offering to the Delphian 
Apollo. So great was the animosity of the people against 
him that he was compelled to leave Rome and to go 
into exile. 

Such is the wonderful account of the capture of Veii 
and of the exploits and the fate of Camillus. That it is 
fictitious in all its details needs no proof. It 
was evidently made up at a time when the Criticism of 
actual facts were forgotten, and it was made 
up by men who had more talent for dramatic composi- 
tion than for historical research — men who were not 
even familiar with the laws and habits of the Roman 
people. The charge, for instance, that Camillus com- 
mitted sacrilege by assuming the garb of Jupiter, when 



200 Early Rome. ch. xx. 

he entered Rome in triumph, is utterly futile. We know 
that this was the habit of all the Roman triumphatores. 
By personating, as it were, Jupiter, they were far from 
any sinful arrogance or impiety. On the contrary, they 
intended thereby to imply that it was Jupiter himself 
who triumphed over the enemies of Rome. The idea of 
Veii being taken by a tunnel, driven through the rocky 
hill into the midst of the town, is simply ridiculous, and 
was perhaps suggested by the notion that the channel 
for the water of the Alban lake was the cause of the fall 
of Veii. Whether this channel was actually constructed 
or only repaired at that time, we have no means of know- 
ing. It certainly did exist, and exists even now ; but 
except in the superstition of an ignorant age it could 
have no connection with the capture of a distant town. 
The message to the oracle of Delphi is no doubt only a 
late version of the older story, which attributes the pro- 
phecy to an Etruscan soothsayer ; nor does the state- 
ment deserve credit that the tenth part of the Veientine 
spoils were sent as a present to the Delphian shrine, al- 
though it is adorned with detail intended to make it 
plausible. At the period in question the Romans had 
perhaps not even heard of the Delphian Apollo, and cer- 
tainly never dreamt of consulting him, nor of sending 
him golden offerings. 

Thus nothing can be really ascertained but the bare 
fact that in the year 396 b. c. the city of Veii was, after 
a protracted siege, taken by the Romans. We do not 
even know certainly whether Rome was aided in this 
magnificent conquest by any other Etruscan towns. But 
as we hear that Satricum and Nepete, to the north of 
Veii, were afterwards the allies of Rome, we may at any 
rate conjecture that they had a part in the subversion of 
Veii. Other cities of Etruria may have taken a part in 



ch. xx. Foreign Relations. 201 

the war. Tarquinii and Caere appear to have been 
neutral, but Capena and Falerii are mentioned as allies 
of the Veientines. Falerii, after the fall of Veii, was im- 
plicated in hostilities with Rome. A story better known 
than it deserves to be is related of this war. Camillus, it 
is said, laid siege to the town. During this siege a 
schoolmaster of Falerii treacherously delivered into his 
hands a number of noble children as hostages, but was 
ignominiously sent back into the town to be punished for 
his intended treason. The Faliscans, overcome not by 
the arms but by the generosity of their foe, surrendered. 
This story is condemned as a silly fiction, not only by its 
intrinsic improbability, but by the undoubted fact that 
Falerii continued for a long time afterwards to be an in- 
dependent town. 

The territory acquired by the conquest of Veii was 
about equal to the old possessions of Rome in extent 
and fertility. It offered a magnificent field to Roman 
colonists for, according to the custom of ancient war- 
fare, it was entirely at the disposal of the conquerors, 
who could appropriate as much of it as they thought ex- 
pedient. A part was actually distributed in equal lots 
of seven jugera to Roman settlers. The majority of the 
Veientine citizens who were not killed or sold, or left to 
till the soil, were transported as slaves to Rome, and 
may have proved a valuable accession of skilled work- 
men. Rome was evidently on the road to a rapid de- 
velopment when the Nemesis of the gods, whom Camil- 
lus had in vain attempted to propitiate, brought upon 
her a reverse which seemed hardly less terrible than the 
fate of Veii. Six years after the triumph of Camillus, 
Rome was a heap of ruins, and the Roman people, a 
homeless herd of exiles, were seeking shelter and refuge 
in the city of their late enemies. 



202 Early Rome. CH. xxi. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

THE INVASION OF THE GAULS. 

The large and fruitful plain in the north of Italy, ex- 
tending on both sides of the Po from the Alps to the 
^ ' ,. Adriatic and the Apennines, had been for 

Decline of L 

Etruscan some time in possession of the Etruscans, 

who had built and fortified twelve cities and 
lived in a sort of confederacy, similar to that which 
loosely bound together the towns of Etruria proper. 
Long before the rise of Rome the power of the Etrus- 
cans was at its height; their settlements extended from 
the Alps to Campania, and their ships swept the sea, 
which after them was called the Tyrrhenian. When 
Rome rose to independence and preponderance in La- 
tium, the Etruscan power gradually declined. They 
lost Campania on the advance of the Sabellian races 
into that fertile plain. They were driven out of Latium 
by Rome and her Latin allies, and at the time when 
even the soil of Etruria proper was assailed and Veii, the 
most powerful Etruscan town in the south of that region, 
fell a prey to Rome, their settlements in the north were 
invaded by a more ruthless conqueror, and all the 
vestiges of Etruscan civilization in that beautiful plain 
of the Po were stamped out by the Gauls. 

It is most probable that the inhabitants of Transalpine 
Gaul, the country which has now for centuries borne the 
.... . name of France, had been accustomed in 

Migration 

of the very early ages to cross the mountain 

ranges which separated them from Spain 

and Italy, for the purpose of plunder or permanent 

settlements in the more southern regions. In Spain 



ch. xxi. Invasion of the Gauls. 203 

they amalgamated with the native Iberian tribes and 
formed the mixed race known as Celtiberians. In Italy 
they expelled the former inhabitants from the country, 
which, after them, was called Cisalpine Gaul. These 
migrations and settlements were in all probability not 
effected by one wholesale exodus, but (like the Teutonic 
conquest of Britain) were the work of a long period of 
time, during which tribe after tribe followed the impulse 
given by the first adventurers. 

At length, when the greater part of Cisalpine Gaul 
was filled by the new comers, the flood of migration 
was turned southwards. It filled the plain 

1 1 a • 1 i * 1 • Their inva- 

between the Apennines and the Adriatic, sionof 
where the old Umbrian population gave way Etruna. 
to the Gallic Senones ; it mounted the passes of the 
Apennines, and at length came pouring down into the 
fertile valleys of Etruria proper. Five years after the 
capture of Veii by Camillus, a barbaric host appeared 
before the city of Clusium, a few days' march north of 
Rome. The danger had approached sufficiently near 
to rouse the attention of the Romans, even if they had 
been indifferent to the fate of their neighbours. 

Livy relates that the people of Clusium, in their 
extreme danger, sent ambassadors to implore the aid of 
Rome, and that the senate despatched three Causeo f 
men of the noble house of the Fabii to ex- war with 
postulate with the Gauls, and to request 
them not to molest the allies of the Roman people. It is 
further related that the Gauls, not heeding the interfe- 
rence of a people of whom they had not even heard, 
attacked Clusium, and that the Fabii, forgetful of their 
sacred character of ambassadors, took part in the battle, 
and fought foremost in the ranks of the Etruscans ; that 
upon this breach of the law of nations, the Gauls de- 



204 Early Rome. ch. xxi. 

manded the surrender of the ambassadors, and when 
this was refused by the Romans, forthwith abandoned 
the prosecution of hostilities against Clusium, and 
marched straight upon Rome. 

This story, if not altogether fictitious, seems dressed 
up to flatter the vanity of the Roman patriots. The lan- 
guage put in the mouth of the ambassadors savours of 
the arrogance which at a later period dictated the lan- 
guage of Roman diplomacy, when the power of Rome 
disdained the decencies of international politeness, and 
everywhere exhibited itself in its naked brutality. We 
prefer, therefore, the account of Diodorus, who tells us 
that the Romans did not send ambassadors, but spies. If 
this account is more correct, it follows that all about the 
participation of the Fabii in the fight, and their distin- 
guished bravery, about the offence taken by the Gauls, 
and their message of expostulation to Rome, in short, 
about all that is represented as a consequence of the 
breach of international law, falls to the ground. Nor, in 
truth, is it necessary to search for a particular reason 
why the Gauls should have marched upon Rome. They 
were on a plundering expedition. It was surely a suffi- 
cient inducement for them to attack the Romans, if they 
could hope to obtain their ends, and they were probably 
not too scrupulous in requiring a legitimate cause for 
war. 

At any rate the Romans were not taken unawares. 
They had drawn out their whole strength, and were 
joined by their allies. Thus they marched 
^ at %.? f out 40,000 strong to meet the invaders, who 

were advancing 70,000 strong along the 
left bank of the Tiber. Near the small river Allia 
the two armies met, about ten miles from Rome, on the 
fatal 1 8th of July, 390 b. c. The encounter was sharp, 



ch. xxi. Invasion of the Gauls. 205 

short, and decisive. The impetuous onset of the barba- 
rians, their wild battle-cry, and their fierce, uncouth ap- 
pearance dismayed the Romans, who, seized with a 
panic, fled almost without offering resistance. It was a 
slaughter more than a battle. Thousands rushed into 
the river to save themselves by swimming to the oppo- 
site bank, and many met their death in the waves. 
The consular tribune, A. Sulpicius, with a remnant of 
the army, made good his retreat to Rome, while the 
greater part of the fugitives collected in Veii, the late 
rival of Rome, which, although overthrown, dismantled, 
and deserted, was now the only place of refuge for what 
remained of the Roman legions. 

The Roman people never forgot the terrible day of 
the Allia. The 18th of July was marked as a black day 
in the Roman calendar, and was held unpropitious for 
any public undertaking. The terrible defeat and its 
more terrible consequences made such an impression on 
the public mind that the Gaul was ever afterwards 
dreaded as the most terrible of enemies. 

On the third day after the fatal battle the victorious 
barbarians appeared before the city. The Romans in- 
stead of availing themselves of the respite 
thus given them, and of taking measures for abandoned 
the defence of the walls, thought of nothing 
but flight. They poured out of the city, carrying with 
them their most precious and easily transportable pos- 
sessions, and sought refuge in the neighbouring towns. 
It is related that some of the sacred objects of the tem- 
ples were secretly buried and that the vestal virgins, 
carrying with them the eternal flame from their sanctu- 
ary, hurried along with the crowd across the wooden 
bridge and up the Janiculus, until a plebeian citizen 
bade them mount a wagon on which he was conveying 
his wife and children from the general wreck. 



206 Early Rome. ch. xxi. 

When the Gauls found the walls destitute of defenders, 
they at first feared an ambush and hesitated for a while 
before breaking open the gates and penetrating into the 
deserted streets. They were appalled by the stillness 
which reigned as in a city of the dead. On advancing 
as far as the market-place they observed a number of 
venerable grey-bearded men sitting motionless like 
statues, dressed in robes of office. They were senators, 
who had determined not to survive the downfall of their 
country and who had devoted themselves to death. A 
Gaul doubtful what to think of these figures, plucked 
one by the beard. A blow on his head from the offended 
senator convinced him that he had a living Roman 
before him, and a general massacre of all the devoted 
band was the consequence. 

But besides these few defenceless old men other 

Romans had stayed behind. The Capitol had not been 

abandoned like the remainder of the city. 

Defence of j t was garrisoned by a number of stout- 

the Capitol. ° J . . 

hearted warriors, determined to conquer or 
fall in the defence of the sanctuary of Jupiter Capitoli- 
nus, the symbol and centre of the Roman power. They 
repelled an attack of the Gauls, and compelled them to 
trust to the slow effect of a regular siege, if they wished 
to reduce the place. Meanwhile the city was sacked by 
the barbarians and reduced to ashes. It is said that 
only a few houses on the Palatine escaped the general 
conflagration. In this sad calamity perished all or 
almost all the monuments of antiquity and the records 
of the past. 

The Gauls persisted in pressing the siege with a con- 
stancy hardly natural to such a restless and impatient 
race. The garrison on the Capitol seemed to be hope- 
lessly lost, when one night a young man, called Pontius 



ch. xxi. Invasion of the Gauls. 207 

Cominius, sent from the Roman fugitives at Veii, made 
his way by swimming to a spot near the foot of the capi- 
tol, and, frustrating the watchfulness of the Gauls, scaled 
the rock at a place known to him as accessible to a 
nimble climber. He reported to the military tribune in 
command that the Roman force collected 
at Veii were about to come to the rescue of appointed 
the besieged and that they only wanted the dictator. 

banished Camillus to be their leader. The decree re- 
calling Camillus from banishment and appointing him 
dictator was made immediately, and Cominius hastened 
back the same way he had come. 

His exploit, however, nearly proved fatal to the de- 
fenders of the capitol. The Gauls had noticed his 
footsteps on the rock, and following in the m „ . , 

i 11 i 1 • 1 • The Capitol 

same track succeeded on a dark night in saved by M. 
reaching the top unobserved by the Roman 
sentinels. Even the dogs were remiss in their watch- 
fulness. Only the geese, kept in the temple of Juno, as 
birds sacred to the goddess, set up a loud cackling, and 
thus roused Marcus Manlius, one of the officers in 
charge. He immediately gave the alarm, and rushing 
to the spot where the foremost Gauls had already 
reached the top of the rock, he hurled them down upon 
their companions and thus saved the citadel. 

This danger was luckily averted, but the siege con- 
tinued and the garrison on the capitol was sorely 
pressed. Provisions began to fail, as month 
after month elapsed and no rescue ap- paid to the 
peared. The blockade had now lasted six Gauls - 
months. The Gauls, too, began to suffer from want of 
provisions. They were obliged to detach parts of their 
army for the purpose of collecting supplies. One of 
these bodies was set upon by the people of Ardea, under 



208 Early Rome. ch. xxi. 

the command of Camillus, and routed with great 
slaughter. At length, Brennus, the leader of the Gauls, 
was fain to make an agreement with the Romans on the 
Capitol, and to promise to retire upon payment of a sum 
of money. One thousand pounds of gold was the 
ransom to be paid by the Roman people. The money 
was procured by borrowing the treasures from the tem- 
ples and the ornaments of the Roman matrons. 

When the Roman commissioners were in the act of 
paying the gold to Brennus in the Forum, just at the 
foot of the Capitol, and when, upon their complaints of 
the false weight used by the Gauls, Brennus had just 
thrown his sword into the balance with the 
Jfthe'Sauls insulting words, " Woe to the conquered ! " 
Camillus suddenly appeared on the spot, 
and declaring that the agreement was null and void, be- 
cause it had been concluded without the dictator's 
consent, drove the Gauls off the Forum and out of the 
city. On the next day he encountered them outside the 
gates, and routed them so signally that not a man es- 
caped. Brennus himself fell under the sword of the 
conqueror, who shouted into his ears the terrible words 
he himself had first used in the insolence of victory, 
" Woe to the conquered ! " Thus Rome was saved not 
only from her foes but also from the disgrace of owing 
her deliverance to the payment of gold rather than to 
the sword; and Camillus restored to his country, be- 
came the second founder of the city. 

We have related the story of the capture and delivery 
of Rome in the form which it had assumed in Livy's 
time under the influence of patriotic tradi- 
§2e t jjjjjj n of tion. We need hardly say that it is co- 
loured by national and family pride, and 
that some of its features resemble more a theatrical 



ch. xxi. Invasion of the Gauls. 209 

catastrophe than sober reality. Fortunately in the 
narratives of Diodorus and Polybius some traces of an 
older and less falsified tradition have been preserved, 
by the help of which we can clear away some at least of 
the fictions of the later annalists. 

It is, at any rate, certain that the Gauls after their 
victory on the Allia entered Rome and destroyed the 
city with the exception of the Capitol. But 
we may doubt whether the destruction was s truction of 
so systematic and complete as it is gene- ^t^ets? 
rally represented — whether all the stone than re- 

' ported. 

buildings and the walls of the city were 
pulled down after the combustible matter had been 
consumed by the flames. A regular destruction of solid 
masonry is a work of time and great labour, such as 
would not be likely to be undertaken by invaders like 
the Gauls, who had no object in view but rapine and 
plunder. We know from Diodorus and Justin that the 
Gauls penetrated as far as Iapygia in the extreme south 
of Italy, and that some of them entered as mercenaries 
into the service of Dionysius of Syracuse, then at war 
with the Greek towns in Italy. Being bent on such 
distant enterprises, from which ample gain and booty 
were to be expected, how should they have been in- 
duced to waste their time and energy in pulling down 
what remained of the houses, temples, monuments, or 
walls, after they had ransacked them for treasures 
and committed them to the flames ? Besides the walls 
and temples, Rome contained at that time very few 
solid structures. The majority of the private houses 
were mere straw thatched or shingle-covered huts ; yet 
even among the private buildings some may have been 
built at least in part of stone, and most of these may 
have survived the conflagration. Thus it is possible 



210 Early Rome. ch. xxi. 

that even outside the Capitol a few monuments of an- 
tiquity were preserved, and that the ancient records 
were not so completely destroyed as the later annalists 
have reported. 

We are the more fully justified in adopting this view, 
as we can hardly believe the statement that the Gauls 
encamped on the site of the ruins of Rome 
Long dura- f or seven months to press the siege of the 
blockade Capitol. They could hardly have done so 

without exposing themselves to the most de- 
structive effects of a climate, not merely unhealthy but 
deadly to a northern people. In fact, they would not 
have been barbarians, but madmen, if, with the prospect 
of a protracted siege before them, they had deliberately 
destroyed the shelter of which they would have felt such 
urgent need. We refer again to the testimony of Diodo- 
rus and Justin, who speak of the extension of the Gallic 
invasion to southern Italy. With such a march south- 
wards the blockade of the Capitol for seven months is 
incompatible, and cannot therefore be admitted as histo- 
rical. 

The oldest stories of the part played by Camillus seem 
to presuppose that the Gauls did not stay a very long 
time in the ruins of Rome. They represent 
The story of Camillus as elected dictator and as in com- 
mand of a Roman force outside the city. 
Surely, they could not look upon him as inactive for 
many months, or as engaged only in hovering on the 
outskirts of the territory occupied by the invaders. The 
story of Camillus is essentially dramatic in character. 
It brings the hero on the scene of action in a manner 
nothing short of marvellous, like a deus ex machina, and 
it would not have resulted to the honour of such a hero 
to wait seven months and to let his countrymen undergo 



ch. xxi. Invasion of the Gauls, 211 

the agonies of despair and famine before he came to 
their rescue. 

But after all the story of Camillus appears to be only 
a fiction invented for the glory of the Furian house to 
which Camillus belonged. Not to dwell on 
other points we will simply quote the testi- edby* ' 
mony of Polybius, who says that " the Gauls Poiybius. 
withdrew unmolested with their booty, having volunta- 
rily and on their own terms restored the town to the Ro- 
mans." After this explicit statement what becomes of 
the heroic deeds of Camillus, of the unjust scales with the 
sword of Brennus, and of his expulsion from the Forum, 
which was so ignominious, and yet less ignominious 
than wonderful ? It is clear that all the various and 
conflicting stories which relate the utter discomfiture of 
the Gauls and the recovery of the booty or ransom, are 
fictions calculated to soothe the wounded pride of the 
Romans and to glorify the family of Camillus. 

Hardly less suspicious is the story of the Capitoline 
geese and of M. Manlius, the saviour of the Capitol. 
They both belong to the class of legends called aetiologi- 
cal, 1. e. invented to account for an existing 
custom or a name (p. 72). The goose was Th h e e |ee2a°n 
a bird sacred to Juno, and it acquired this ^ ti °^ ad 
honour not by the achievement of the watch- 
ful defenders of the Capitol, for the fact of geese being 
kept in the sanctuary of Juno at the time of the siege 
shows that the custom was older than that date. There 
was an annual festival in honour of Juno, celebrated 
with a public procession, in which geese were carried 
through the town on soft cushions and festively adorned, 
whilst dogs were nailed on boards. The story of the 
neglect of the dogs and the watchfulness of the geese 
was probably invented to account for this ancient cus- 



212 Early Rome. ch. xxi. 

torn. The share of Manlius in the saving of the Capitol 
may have been inferred from his name Capitolinus, a 
name derived more probably from his residence on the 
Capitoline hill. 

Whatever may have been the duration of the occupa- 
tion of Rome by the Gauls, and however extensive the 
destruction caused by the invasion, it is certain that the 
injury done to the republic was not vital. On the con- 
trary, the material losses seem to have been soon re- 
paired. The city was rebuilt in a very short time ; the 
ascendency of Rome over her dependent allies, if it 
was weakened momentarily, was soon fully re-esta- 
blished, and, what is more important than all this, the 
framework of the constitution bore the strain of disas- 
trous war without giving way in any part. When the 
storm had passed over and the damage which it had 
caused was repaired, Rome continued her career of 
internal reform and foreign conquests, not merely with 
unimpaired but with invigorated energy. Only fourteen 
years after the battle of the Allia, Licinius and Sextius 
began the agitation for the equal division of the consular 
power between patricians and plebeians, which ten years 
later led to the Licinian laws (366 B.C.). In the year 
387 B.C. — only three years after the Gallic catastrophe — 
the first great addition was made to the Roman territory. 
Four new tribes were formed out of the conquered 
Veientine land and added to the original twenty-one 
tribes to which the republic had been limited for 120 
years. Twenty-nine years later (358 B.C.) two more 
tribes were added from acquisitions in Latium, and at 
the same time the league with the Latins was renewed 
on a fresh basis, which made Latium practically a de- 
pendency of Rome. A few years later (354 B.C.) the 
spreading influence and increasing power of Rome ap- 



CH. xxr. Invasion by the Gauls. 213 

pears in the conclusion of a treaty of friendship with the 
great nation of the Samnites. In 348 B. c. a commercial 
treaty was concluded with Carthage, and in 343 — not 
half-a-century after the invasion of the Gauls — Rome 
was powerful enough to enter on that long-continued 
struggle with the Samnites which resulted in the acqui- 
sition of undoubted supremacy in Italy, fit may well 
be doubted whether the Gauls had done more harm or 
more good to the Roman people by their invasion of 
Italy. If Rome was paralyzed for a moment by the blow 
on the Allia, perhaps the neighbours of Rome were 
more vitally injured, and thus the relative strength of 
Rome increased. Besides, the Gauls were now looked 
upon as the natural enemies of all the native races of 
Italy, and as they continued their periodical invasions for 
a considerable time, Rome acquired by degrees the 
position of a defender of the common soil, and the right 
to unite the Italians into a large confederation. This 
confederation, under the Roman leadership, was the 
mighty state which in the succeeding generations over- 
threw Carthage, the kingdoms of Macedon and Syria, 
the commonwealths of Greece, the barbarians of north- 
ern Italy and Spain, and which when it had outgrown 
the forms of federal and republican institutions, was 
changed into an absolute military monarchy, which 
completed the work of conquest. 



INDEX. 



CAM. 

ADMINISTRATION of justice, 
122 

Aediles, 142 
Aeneas, 32 

Aequians, decay of, 191 
Aequian wars, 154 
Aetiological myths, 71 
Agrarian laws, 150 
Alba Longa, head of confederacy, 85 
Allia, battle of, 204 
Alliance of Romans and Sabines, 87 
Amulius, 32 
Ancus Martius, 45 
Annalists, 15, 29, 30 
Antium, 159 
Anxur, 192 
Appius Claudius, 172 
Ardea, 192 
Aricia, 192 

Assembly of centuries, 133 
Association of gentes, 7 
Asylum of Romulus, 34 
Athens, embassy to, 170 
Attus Navius, 48; the augur, 89 
Augurs, 124 

Auspices, 102; formality of, 124; used 
for political purposes, 125 



BEAUFORT, 11 
Bolae, 192 
Brennus, 208 
Brutus, 58, 61 



CAERE, 201 
Camillus, 207; criticism of his- 
tory of, 210; military reforms of, 
195 



DUU. 

Canuleian law, 178 

Capena, 201 

Capitol, defence of the, 206 

Censorship, 183 ; of morals, 187 ; 

limited, 188 
Centuriate assembly, 52 
Chronicles, family, 28 
Chronological impossibilities, 68 
Cincinnatus, 159, 183 
Cincius Alimentus, 15 
Claudian family, 168 
Clients, 115 
Cloaca maxima, 49 
Cloelia, 64 

Clusium, siege of, 203 
Comitia centuriata, 133 ; military 

character of, 133 
Comitia curiata, origin of the, 134, 

138 ; superseded, 132 
Comitia tributa, 113, 146, 177 
Consular office, 117; duties of, 121 
Coriolanus, 155 
Cornelius Cossus, 193 
Cossus, Cornelius, 193 
Credulity of the old historians, 10 
Cremera, Roman fort on the, 163 
Curiae, assembly of, 112 
Curtian lake, 36, 73 
Curtius, 36 

DECEMVIRS, 169 
Delphi, oracle of, consulted, 
58 
Delphian Apollo, 200, 
Descent of Roman people, 4 
Dictator, 106 

Dictatorship, 118 ; origin of, 119 
Divination, 101 
Duumviri perduellionis, 105 

215 



*? 



2l6 



Index. 



KIN. 

EPIC poems wanting in Rome, 93 
Epic poetry of Greece, 92 
Etruscan dominion in Latium, 89 
Etruscan war, 162 
Etruscans, decline of, 202 
Evidence, contemporary, 13; second- 
hand, 14 
Extent of Roman empire, 1 



FABII, before Clusium, 203 ; dis- 
aster of the, 163 
Fabius, Pictor, 15 
Falerii, 201 
Family portraits, 27 
Family, Roman, 25 
Faustulus, 32 
Fiction, 19 
Fidenae, 193 

Financial duties of the censors, 188 
Funerals, 27 
Funeral orations, 27 



GABII, 56 
Gauls, 195; migration of the, 
202 ; destruction of Rome by the, 
209 
Geographical situation of Rome, 4, 6 
Gibbon, 11 



HIERARCHIAL character of 
civil communities, 95 
Horatii and Curiatii, 43 
Horatius Codes, 63 
Hostus Hostilius, 35 



TMPERIUM, 119 
J. Inauguration of the king, 105 
Intercession, right of, 118, 141 
Intermarriage between patricians and 

plebeians, 174, 178 
Interreges, 105 
Interregnum, 38, no 



TUPITER Capitolinus, temple of, 

Jurisdiction, public and private, 122 
Jus auxilii of tribunes, 142, 144 



KING of Sacrifices, rex sacrorum, 
lowered in authority, 123 
King, sacerdotal, 104 



POE. 

LABICI, 192 
Larentia, 33 
Lars Tolumnius, 193 
Latin war, 65, 83 
Laudations, 28 
Law, influence of Rome, 2 
Laws of kings, 24 
Laws, origin of, 70; of the twelve 

tables, 169 
League with the Latins and Herni- 

cans, 150 
Legends of kings, 31 
Lewis, Sir G. C, 12 
Lex curiata, 119 
Lex curiata de imperio, 113 
Lex Sacrata, 141 
Lucretia, 58 



■jVT AGISTER Populi, 106, no, 

Manlius, defence of the capital, 207 

Master of the horse, 120 

Mettius Fufetius, 44 

Military monarchy in Rome, 90; pay, 

196 ; tribunes, 189 ; tribunes with 

consular power, 179 
Mons sacer, 141 
Montesquieu, n 
Monuments, public, 25 
Mucius Scaevola, 63 
Mythology, adoption of the Greek, 

97 

NEPETE, 200 
Niebuhr, 11 
Numa and Ancus identified, 78 
Numa Martius, 40 
Numa Pompilius, 38 
Numitor, 32 



o 



ATHS, 143 
Ostia, 46 



PATRES, 109; conscripti, 129 
Patricians, 112; influence of, 

on elections, 181 ; predominance 

of, 136 
Patrum auctoritas, no 
Pecunia, 149 

People in the regal period, in 
Plebeians, 112 ; rights of, 114 
Plebeian senators, 127 
Plebs, origin of, 115 
Poems, historical, 16, 18 



Index. 



217 



SAC. 

Pontiffs, 100, 107; interpreters of di- 
vine and human law, 123 ; guar- 
dians of science and learning, 194 

Pontifical annals, 22 ; burning of, 23 

Pontius Cominius, 207 

Poplicola, 120 

Porcius Cato, 15 

Porsenna, 62, 81 

Porta Carmentalis, 164 

Praeneste, 190 

Praetor maximus, 106, 119 

Praetors, 117 

Priests, 100 ; kings of Rome, 88 ; pub- 
lic servants, 122 

Public documents, 23 

Public land, 149 

Publilian law, 165 

QUAESTORES Parricidii, 105 
Quaestors elected by the peo- 
ple, 176; doubled in number, 188 
Quirinus, 40 

RAPE of the Sabines, 34, 72 
Rationalistic explanation of fa- 
bles, 66 

Relics, legendary, 24 

Religion, age of, 71, 88 ; as a legal 
system, 99 ; meaning of the word, 
99; of the Romans, 96, 98; purely 
national, 95 

Religious institutions, great antiquity 
of, 94. 95 

Rex sacrorum, 108 

Rhea Silvia, 32 

Roman armies, 196 

Rome, a Latin settlement, 85; de- 
struction of by the Gauls, 209 

Romulus, legend of, 75 

Romulus and Remus, legend of, 33 

Romulus and Tarquinius identified, 
78 

Romulus and Tullus identified, 77 



'ABINES, invasion of, 86 

\ Sacerdotal king superseded, 



VOL. 

Sacred law, 142 

Satricum, 200 

Secession, causes of, 141 ; of the 
plebs, 140 

Senate, a consultative body, 127; 
character and stability of, 131 ; of 
the regal period, 108; purely pa- 
trician, 129 ; not a representative 
assembly, 130 

Senators added by Brutus, 127 ; mode 
of electing, 131; number of, 127 

Servian constitution, origin of, 79 

Servilius Ahala, 183 

Servius Tullius, 78 

Sibylline books, 57 

Spolia opima, 193 

Spurius Cassius, 150, 153 

Spurius Maelius, 182 



TANAQUIL, 46 
Tarpeia, 35 

Tarquinii, 201 

Tarquinius Priscus, 47 

Tarquinius, reforms of, 48 

Tarquinius Superbus, 55 

Terentilian rogations, 167 

Titus Tatius, 36 

Tradition, 14, 19, 30 

Tribes, local, 145 ; old patricians, 37 

Tribunes, antiquity of, 143 ; election 
of, 144: number of, 144; of the 
people, 141 ; sacrosancti, 141 

Tribute of war tax, 146 

Tullus Hostilius, 41 



VALERIAN laws, 120 
Valerius, 120 
Veii, 194 ; siege of, 197 ; capture of, 

197 
Vesta, 40 
Vico, 11 
Virginia, 173 
Volscians, decay of, 191 
Volscian Wars , 1 54 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY. 

A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF 

ENGLAND AND EUROPE AT SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS 

SUBSEQUENT TO THE' CHRISTIAN ERA. 

Edited by 

Edward E. Morris. 

Sixteen volumes, i6mo, with 70 Maps, Plans and Tables. 

Sold separately. Price per vol., $1.00. 

The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $16.00. 

THE BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLE AGES— England and Europe 

in the Ninth Century. By the Very Rev. R.W. Church, M. A. 
THE NORMANS IN EUROPE— The Feudal System and England 

under Norman Kings. By the Rev. A. H. Johnson, M.A. 
THE CRUSADES. By the Rev. G.-W. Cox, M.A. 
THE EARLY PLANTAGE NETS— Their Relation to the History 

of Europe : The Foundation and Growth of Constitutional 

Government. By the Rev. Wm. Stubbs, M.A. 
EDWARD III. By the Rev. W. Warburton, M.A. 
THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK— The Conquest and 

Loss of France. By James Gairdner. 
THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. By Frederic 

Seebohm. With Notes on Books in English relating to the 

Reformation. By Prof. George P. Fisher, D.D. 
THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. By the Rev. M. Creighton, M.A. 
THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR, 1618-1648. By Samuel Rawson 

Gardiner. 
THE PURITAN REVOLUTION; and the First Two Stuarts, 

1603-1660. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner. 
THE FALL OF THE STUARTS; and Western Europe. By the 

Rev. Edward Hale, M.A. 
THE AGE OF ANNE. By Edward E. Morris, M.A. 
THE EARLY HANOVERIANS— Europe from the Peace of Utrech to 

the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. By Edward E. Morris, M.A. 
FREDERICK THE GREAT AND THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR. By 

F. W. Longman. 
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND FIRST EMPIRE. By 

William O'Connor Morris. With Appendix by Andrew 

D. White, LL.D., Ex-Pres't of Cornell University. 
THE EPOCH OF REFORM, 1830-1850. By Justin McCarthy. 

These volumes, read consecutively, form the best history of 
Modern Times. 



7 8 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 

A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF 

GREECE AND ROME, AND OF THEIR RELATIONS TO 

OTHER COUNTRIES AT SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS. 

Edited by 

Rev. G. W. Cox and Charles Sankey, M.A. 

Eleven volumes, i6mo, with 41 Maps and Plans. 

Sold separately. Price per vol., $1.00. 

The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $11.00. 

TROY— ITS LEGEND, HISTORY, AND LITERATURE. By 
S. G. W. Benjamin. 

THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS. By the Rev. G. W. Cox. 

THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE— From the Flight of Xerxes to the 
Fall of Athens. By the Rev. G. W. Cox. 

THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN SUPREMACIES. By Charles 
Sankey, M.A. 

THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE— Its Rise and Culmination tv. the 
Death of Alexander the Great. By A. M. Curteis, M.A. 

TM&five volumes above give a connected and complete history 
of Greece from the earliest times to the death of Alexander. 

EARLY ROME— From the Foundation of the City to its Destruo 
tion by the Gauls. By W. Ihne, Ph.D. 

ROME AND CARTHAGE— The Punic Wars. By R. Boswortb 
Smith, M.A. 

THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SULLA. By A. H. Beesly, M.A. 

THE ROMAN TRIUMVIRATES. By the Very,£Rev ; . Charles \ 
Merivale, D.D. 4 ** v ( 

THE EARLY EMPIRE — From the Assassination of Julius Caesar 
to the Assassjnation of Domitian. By the Rev. W. Wolfe 
Capes, M.A. ■ 

THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES— the Roman Empire of the 
Second Century. By the Rev. W. Wolfe Capes, M.A. 

The six volumes above give the History of Rome from the 
founding of the City to the death of Marcus Amelius Antoninus. 







Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proce: 
Neutralizing agent: MagnesiunrOxide 
Treatment Date: NOV 2001 

PreservationTechriologJe 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATI 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



